Microsoft Office 95, also known as Microsoft Office for Windows 95, is a version of Microsoft Office released on August 24, 1995, along with Windows 95. It is the successor to Office 4.3 and is the first 32-bit version of Microsoft Office. While designed specifically for Windows 95, it also works on Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 98. As it is 32-bit, it does not run on Windows 3.x or earlier versions of Windows. It is also not supported on Windows NT 3.1 or Windows NT 3.5, despite these operating systems being 32-bit. Office 95 was succeeded by Office 97 on November 19, 1996. All support for Microsoft Office 95 ended on December 31, 2001, the same day as Windows 95.
Features
Microsoft Office 95 includes six applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Schedule+ and Binder. The CD-ROM version also includes Microsoft Bookshelf. True to its namesake, this suite is designed specifically for Windows 95. Previously, Microsoft had released Office 4.2 for Windows NT for several architectures, which included 32‑bit Word 6.0 for Windows NT and Excel 5.0 for Windows NT, but PowerPoint 4.0 was 16‑bit. With Office for Windows 95, all components in the suite were 32-bit. All the Office 95 programs are OLE 2-enabled, meaning that they allow interoperability between themselves, as well as all other applications that support this data interchange protocol. Binder used this protocol to bind OLE objects together. Office for Windows 95 bears version number 7.0 to match Word's version number. Other components also bear the same version numbers to show that they are contemporaries, although their predecessors were not version 6.0. The previous versions of components were Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, PowerPoint 4.0, Schedule+ 1.0 and Access 2.0. Binder was a new app at the time with no predecessor. The Office 95 programs utilize a two-tone gradient in the title bar at the top of the window, gradually turning from black at the left side to dark blue at the right. At the time, this was unique to Office 95, no other program running under Windows 95 or Windows NT utilized gradient title bars. This feature was eventually incorporated into the shell of Windows 98 and later, which would allow customizable gradient colors and extend the feature to include dialog boxes as well. Microsoft Excel contained an easter egg, a hidden Doom–like game called Hall of Tortured Souls crediting the application's writers.
Contemporaneous components
Several additional programs were "compatible with Microsoft Office 95":
There were no downloadable service packs or service releases for Office for Windows 95. Instead, two updated versions, 7.0a and 7.0b were released to fix bugs in the application. The updates could be ordered from Microsoft Support. A downloadable update was released in 1999 to address minor year 2000 problems.
Issues
Versions 3.0 and 3.5 of the Microsoft Jetdatabase engine, used by Access for Windows 95 and the later released Access 97 respectively, had a critical issue which made these versions of Access unusable on a computer with more than 1 GB of memory. While this problem was fixed for Jet 3.5/Access 97, it was never fixed for Jet 3.0 or Access 95.
System requirements
Microsoft Office 95 requires a 386DX or higher CPU, and either Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51. It also requires 8 MB of RAM for typical use. Regarding hard disk space, compact installations require 28 MB, "typical" installations require 55 MB, and full installations require 88 MB.
