What's New in Microsoft Office Word 2003?

You'll notice some changes as soon as you start Microsoft Office Word 2003. The toolbars and menus have a new look, for example. But the features that are new and improved in this version of Word go beyond just changes in appearance. Some changes won't be apparent to you until you start using the program.

The following table lists the new and improved features that you might be interested in as well as the lessons and topics in which those features are covered.

New or Improved Feature	What Does This Feature Help You Do?	Lesson	Topic
Support for ink devices	Enables users to use ink input devices to write handwritten edits in Word documents.	Collaborating with Others	Tracking and Managing Document Changes
Improved document protection	Enables users to protect documents by restricting style modification and editing privileges.	Collaborating with Others	Preventing Editing or Formatting Changes
Information Rights Management	Helps to prevent sensitive information from getting into the hands of the wrong people, whether by accident or carelessness.	Collaborating with Others	Preventing Editing or Formatting Changes
Compare documents side by side	Enables you to simply determine the differences between two documents without having to merge multiple users’ changes into one document.	Collaborating with Others	Comparing and Merging Documents
Support for XML documents	Enables users to save documents in XML format, so that the content can easily be searched and modified by processes other than Word, such as server-based data processing.	Creating Documents for the Web	Creating an XML Document