Microsoft Corp. today announced the completion of the core products in the new Microsoft� Office System and has released all products to manufacturing, marking a critical step in the delivery of the company's most powerful and valuable release of Office.

The Microsoft Office System is composed of industry-leading productivity programs, servers and services, and includes programs such as the Microsoft Office 2003 editions, and the 2003 versions of Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint�, Access, Outlook�, Visio�, FrontPage� and Publisher. The abilities in the core products can be extended in Microsoft Office System solutions by taking advantage of the productivity-enhancing capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint� Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and the three new programs: Microsoft Office InfoPath� 2003, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 and Microsoft Office OneNote� 2003. The Microsoft Office System is the result of one of the largest and most successful development efforts and beta tests in Microsoft history. More than 600,000 beta testers � approximately three times the participants in previous beta tests � provided Microsoft with detailed feedback over the past year, allowing the company to develop the most innovative and stable Office products to date.