The 5.1a version of Word for Mac was the most liked. It works on 68k systems, even 68000.
The 6 version was an adaptation of the Windows version.
Tested on 9.2.2.
Users of Microsoft Word for the Macintosh 5.0 may not notice any improvements in the appearance of documents they create with the Mac’s most popular word-processing program, but they will notice that creating those documents is faster and easier New commands and tools plus enhancements to existing features add up to a finely tuned word-processing program that's more powerful and intuitive to operate than ever before.
Start Making Sense
Veteran Word users will find that version 5.0 works more intuitively than previous versions. New menus and commands make common tasks easier and add new talents to the program. The Insert menu, for example, provides a fast and convenient way to place document elements such as tables and graphics.
Version 5.0 enhances Word’s familiar paragraph-formatting ruler with a new Ribbon bar, which sits atop the ruler. The Ribbon bar makes it easy to quickly change character formats; access Word’s new drawing module, which lets you create simple graphics on the fly; show and hide invisible characters; or change the number of columns in a section — each with a single point and click.
Redesigned dialog boxes with pop-up menus make a variety of options less confusing. For example, if you want to specify a paragraph's leading at 14 points, regardless of how large the type is, you no longer have to enter -14. You can simply select Exactly from the new pop-up menu and enter 14.
Even more impressive is Word 5.0's addictive shortcut for text editing: You can simply drag a selection to another location instead of using the two-step process of cutting and pasting the text. We'd like to see this feature extended to moving columns in tables and dragging selections between windows.
Word 5.0 also circumvents arcane keyboard combinations and the Key Caps DA by letting you select any character in the current typeface's character set from a table, using the Insert Symbol command. This version also takes much of the guesswork out of using keyboard command equivalents by making them more consistent with Mac conventions: Command A now selects all for example, and Command B creates bold text.
You can access files quickly from version 5.0’s File menu, which provides a handy list of the four most recently opened files. Another welcome addition is case conversion. You can specify a range of text to be all uppercase, lowercase, "title case" (initial caps), "sentence case” (only the first word of each sentence is capitalized), or "toggle case” (which changes the case of selected words from lowercase to uppercase and vice versa).
Word 5.0 has increased the 128-point type limit of previous versions to 16,385 points, which should be more than ample for most users, in addition, font collectors will be happy that the much reviled restriction on the number of fonts in the Font menu has finally been lifted. And last but not least, the magnifying-glass too! has been returned to the Print Preview window, so you can zoom in to take a closer look at a document.
There's one caveat for those who rely on Word to work smoothly with PageMaker: We encountered numerous problems pouring Word 5.0 documents into PageMaker layouts. This incompatibility is apparently due to changes in Word 5.0’s file format, although the previous version of Word has no trouble opening documents created with Word 5.0. As we went to press, Aldus was putting the finishing touches on a special filler to combat this problem. The filter should be available by the time this review appears.
To date, the only way around this problem is to open Word 5.0 documents in Word 4.0 and save them in RTF format. Saving in RTF format within Word 5,0 is not advisable, because the document will lose such characters as bullets, em dashes, and smart quotes when Word 5.0-generated RTF files are opened with Word 4.0 or PageMaker.
The Write Tools
In addition to making common tasks easier and more accessible, Word 5.0 includes several powerful new tools. One of the most impressive is the Find File command, which can quickly compile a list of files on any volume thal meet userdefined criteria. Because Word 5.0 lets you attach title, subject, author, version, and keyword information to each file summary, you can base searches on the contents of any of these fields as well as search for text that appears within documents. You can limit searches to only those fi les that Word can open, or you can search for other file types. Once Find File has compiled a list that meets your search criteria, you can view information, such as file statistics, about the files. If the file is one that Word can open, you can view its contents as well as copy text to the Clipboard, without ever opening the file.
New integrated writing tools add to version 5.0's versatility. The powerful built-in grammar checker can identify sentence structures that violate as many as 33 rules. The excellent built-in thesaurus lists antonyms as well as synonyms for selected words. The enhanced spelling checker automatically supplies suggestions, looks for misspellings based on word phonetics, and detects duplicated words and punctuation marks as well as words that run together.
Anyone who has ever struggled with Word's formula commands for setting mathematical equations will appreciate the new version's Equation Editor, a pared-down version of Design Sciences' popular MathType. It sports a graphical interface and uses Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding, so you can place equations and edit them directly within documents without cutting and pasting.
Word 5.0's Print Merge Helper greatly simplifies mail-merge. When you select the Helper, a ribbon-like strip appears at the top of your open document's window. The strip provides pull-down menus with selections that can automatically insert field names and conditional statements into documents, which eliminates the cumbersome task of typing angled brackets around fields. If you've never created a table or a database for mail-merge, the Helper can create a blank data file for you, link it to a document, and add the proper merge syntax.
Although Word's style sheets, outlining. and page-layout features remain virtually unchanged in the new version, a few new tweaks are worth mentioning. You can now specify custom borders and screen fills for paragraphs and table cells, so you can create text on a gray background without importing graphics or embedding PostScript code. You can also set borders (but not fills) for individual picture boxes.
The Insert Picture command lets Word 5.0 import PICT, EPS, and TIFF graphics directly, without use of the Clipboard, However, importing graphics is sometimes problematic, because Word’s file converters can be very slow and occasionally quit before Finishing their task.
In general, when it comes to style-sheet management. Word can't compete with WordPerfect’s powerful capahililies. Although it's possible to create sophisticated layouts with Word, it’s still not easy or intuitive, despite the addition of the Frame command, which is really a slight repackaging of Word 4.0's Position command. WordPerfect and Nisus, on the other hand, each offer more-powerful and easier-to-use layout capabilities. However, Word's ability to collapse an entire document into an outline, basing the outline structure on headings and subheadings, is a useful feature that's unmatched in any other word-processing program.
Word 5.0 offers full support for System 7 features such as publish-and-subscribe, TrueType fonts, Apple events, and Balloon Help. It also lets you embed objects from other programs, such as Excel. Embedding uses no edition files but actually embeds parl of another application's document within the Word file. Word also emulates Windows' Dynamic Data Exchange with its Paste Link command, which can create a direct link between a Word document and another file, such as an Excel spreadsheet, without requiring an edition file.
The Bottom Line
If you're considering purchasing Microsoft Word for the first time, version 5.0 is an excellent value. A host of new features makes it easier to learn and use than previous versions. The addition of powerful new tools, such as the built-in grammar checker and thesaurus, combined with Word's unique outlining capability, make it the Mac’s premier writing took Equally impressive is the new Print Merge Helper, which makes mailmerge as simple as selecting a few menu choices.
However, if you’re a Word 4.0 user who's grown accustomed to that version’s vagaries and you don't need specific System 7 features such as publish-and-subscribe, you may be better off setting aside the upgrade fee until Word undergoes another major revision.
Taub, Eric. (April 1992). Microsoft Word for the Macintosh 5.0. MacUser. (pgs. 50-51).
Any 68K physical or emulated.
Microsoft Corporation
Applications
out of 10 (2 votes)
1665 / 
2017-12-30 / 
e34baae139721959ffe634951bc66acc0f098172 / 
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MSWord51.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
