Talk:History of Microsoft Word

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the History of Microsoft Word article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Software: Computing Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Software, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of software on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SoftwareWikipedia:WikiProject SoftwareTemplate:WikiProject Softwaresoftware articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Computing.

Microsoft Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Microsoft, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles relating to Microsoft on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MicrosoftWikipedia:WikiProject MicrosoftTemplate:WikiProject MicrosoftMicrosoft articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Magic Wand acquisition by Microsoft[edit]

Les Pinter has stated Microsoft bought out Magic Wand word processor a year before the initial release of Microsoft Word. Pinter assumes that Magic Wand served the source base Microsoft used to derive Word from. While the claim is dubious, the fact of acquisition (which itself was never disputed AFAIK), shows the moves of Microsoft in preparing to enter the word processing market. Some prior discussion and sources can be found at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Magic Wand (software). Does this fact worth mention in the article? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 06:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See also User talk:Black Kite#Articles for deletion/Magic Wand (software). -- Trevj (talk) 08:50, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Word for UNIX Systems Release 5.1[edit]

There is no mention in the article of the UNIX version of Word. I personally supported users of this in a small company in the early 90s. There's still mention of it here: SCO UNIX Operating System It was a practically identical experience to using Word 5.1 on DOS.

Here's a press release from 1991 about it. Also mentions release 5.0 : The Santa Cruz Operation announces Microsoft Word for UNIX Systems Version 5.1 Emlynoregan (talk) 01:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"it was followed by four very similar versions that were not very successful"[edit]

This doesn't really seem right. Word 5 was pretty successful iirc. Seems to be treating all of Word pre Windows as "mostly harmless"! Emlynoregan (talk) 01:56, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Word 2000 Description Missing[edit]

Word 2000 is mentioned several times - and referenced back from later versions. Shouldn't it have its own section? ZagrebMike (talk) 11:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on History of Microsoft Word. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100324130734/http://www.walterglenn.com/2007/01/13/save-as-doc-instead-of-docx-in-word-2007/ to http://www.walterglenn.com/2007/01/13/save-as-doc-instead-of-docx-in-word-2007/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:50, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why does "History of Microsoft Word" start in 1990?[edit]

There was a Windows version in 1983 and Macintosh in 1985. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeffkw (talk • contribs) 19:57, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why does Word to this day identify itself as "OpusApp"?[edit]

"Opus" seems to have been the (internal?) name of one of the earliest versions, see here: https://computerhistory.org/blog/microsoft-word-for-windows-1-1a-source-code

And it is still the name of the main window control (or something) today as of 2023: https://i.imgur.com/Xhii4sj.png

It would be interesting to know more about "Opus" in the article. DavidGPeters (talk) 14:46, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source of MS Word[edit]

Microsoft Word was developed using a CPM program called the Magic Wand, written by Mike Griffin of Houston, Texas and sold to Bill Gates on September 24th, 1980 by Les Pinter, COO of Small Business Applications. Charles Simonyi and his team devoted several years to rewriting the Magic Wand's Intel Z-80 code into C++. 172.83.228.5 (talk) 19:09, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a reliable source for that information? - ZLEA _T\^C 01:12, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]