General Resources

See My Version History page for patches.

Office XP / 2002

You can't run XP on Windows 95. You need at least Windows '98.

Total Access Analyser 2000 will install but the Access Add-In does not work - probably wrong registry entries.

You can manipulate the Places Bar easily now - Places Bar - Office XP or the authoritative MSKB article Q282087 - OFFXP How to Customize My Places Bar in Open and Save As Dialog Boxes
You can take your favourite settings with you. See: ZDNet Help & How-To Make any Office your own
You can recover from "sudden" Office program disasters like a lost .dll (been fiddling lately) without blowing away your machine and starting from square one - in the Help pulldown menu, there is a Detect and Repair
Clippy is being banished, sort of. He and his cohorts are still around but due to overwhelming user complaints, he's receded into the background. Smart Tags replace him. If you don't like them, follow ZDNet Help & How-To Turn off Smart Tags.

Get the Places Bar .dll from Microsoft Downloads or do it manually - Inside Microsoft Word - Customizing Word 2000's Places Bar
Get Office 2000 SR-1, then SR-2. Apply Jet SP-5. Access 2000 is pretty buggy even after these patches, but at least they resolve the worst problems. Beware SR-2 locks down Outlook email attachments (for virus defense reasons) so you might not want to apply it).

In Office '97, I've seen and heard so many people grizzle about Mr. Paperclip, the default Office Assistant. Office Assistants are not always the most helpful and can be downright irritating. However, there are much more pleasant buddies than Mr. Paperclip. Get Office 97 Assistant- Kairu the Dolphin or Office 97 Assistant- F1 the Robot - they're much more fun.
Get Office SR-1 and then SR-2. You need to apply them in sequence. Without SR-2, Excel recalcs on various operations is buggy.