Microsoft Office 2003 (codenamed Office 11) is an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for its Windows operating system. Office 2003 was released to manufacturing on August 19, 2003, and was later released to retail on October 21, 2003. It was the successor to Office XP and the predecessor to Office 2007.
New features in Office 2003 include information rights management; new collaboration features; improved support for SharePoint, smart tags, and XML; and extended use of Office Online services. Office 2003 introduces two new programs to the Office product lineup: InfoPath, a program for designing, filling, and submitting electronic structured data forms; and OneNote, a note-taking program for creating and organizing diagrams, graphics, handwritten notes, recorded audio, and text. It also introduces the Picture Manager graphics software to open, manage, and share digital images.
With the release of Office 2003, Microsoft rebranded the Office productivity suite as an integrated system dedicated to information workers. As a result, Microsoft appended the "Office" branding to the names of all programs. Office 2003 is also the first version with support for Windows XP colors and visual styles, and introduces updated icons.
Office 2003 is the last version of Office to include the menu bar and toolbars across all programs,as well as the last version to include the "97 - 2003" file format as the default file format. It is compatible with Windows 2000 SP3, Windows XP and later, but not with Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, or Windows Me. It is also not supported on Windows 8,Windows Server 2012,or later versions of Windows. It is the last version of Office compatible with Windows 2000, since Office 2007 requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista at the minimum.[17]
Microsoft released a total of three service packs for Office 2003 throughout its lifecycle. Service Pack 1 was released on July 27, 2004, Service Pack 2 was released on September 27, 2005, and Service Pack 3 was released on September 17, 2007.
Mainstream support for Office 2003 ended on April 14, 2009, and extended support ended on April 8, 2014, the same dates that mainstream and extended support ended for Windows XP.