What is Microsoft Word 98?

Word 98 from Microsoft is not just highly competent word processing software, it is also capable of page layout. It supports .doc, .rtf, and several other file format standards that were popular at the time.

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Mcrosoft Word is no longer the application you know and loathe. After the disastrous release of Word 6.0 (which many considered a downgrade), Microsoft gathered up all the hate mail, took note of what went wrong, and fixed it. This new version doesn’t merely atone for past sins, it makes word processing fun again with a slew of new features and shortcuts.

Word 98 catches both spelling and grammar mistakes as soon as you type them and underlines errors with red and green squiggly lines, respectively. You can fix the errors by control-clicking to call up the improved spelling checker, which now knows more words. Control-clicking in a paragraph presents a dialog box that lets you cut, copy, and paste as well as adjust formatting, draw a table, or insert a synonym from Word’s thesaurus.

The new Draw Table tools top the charts on ease of use with a simple floating palette that lets you add and delete rows and cells as if you were using a pencil and eraser. You can also align text, split and merge cells, sort and sum information, color backgrounds, and create borders without convoluted, complex menu commands.

Scroll through Word’s new menus and you’ll notice the Table menu isn’t the only one that’s changed. The File menu now offers options that let you open Web pages and save any Office document as an HTML Web page. Versions, also new to File, stores saved copies of a document in one file, so you can compare versions without saving repeatedly.

The View menu introduces an Online layout view as well as eight new toolbars, which give you more control in editing movies, pictures, text, charts, Web pages, and even Visual Basic. Document Map, another new fea- ture, creates a hyperlinked index of your document in a frame, so you can jump to parts of your article as if it were a Web page. Now that Office 98 supports Apple technologies like QuickTime and QuickTime VR, you can easily import movies via the Insert menu.

If you don’t know what’s in a long document, Word can automatically summarize it. It’s not always accurate, but it gives you a general idea of the document’s key topics. Editors will appreciate the Track Features tool, which highlights changes using the appropriate editing symbols. And anyone writing a letter can probably do it better with the new Letter Wizard, which enters the formalities, even if they’re not quite heartfelt. Font fanatics will herald the return of the Font menu (now WYSIWYG), while efficiency experts will dig the comeback of Word 5.1’s Work menu, which contains often-used documents for quick click access.

Word 98 has so drastically evolved that it bears scant resemblance to its predecessor. Sure, it still sucks up RAM, but it’s the most advanced word processing application to date.

Echler, Nikki. (June 1998). Word 98. MacAddict. (pg. 46).

Download Microsoft Word 98 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Many of the features and capabilities of Word 98 for Mac can also be preserved, opened, and edited on later editions of Word for PC. Note that if the file is modified and saved on the PC, the file type must be .doc instead of the default .docx found in later editions of Word.

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver