A lot of PCs sold to the 'home' market come with Microsoft Works which includes various modules for word processing, spreadsheet and database applications.
While these are quite capable of handling basic office functions, they are not directly compatible with MS-Office which is rather more widely used, thereby causing some difficulty when people start passing documents around.
A related problem is that MS-Office itself comes in various 'packages' which may not include all of the available modules.
For example, the Microsoft Office 2007 'Basic' edition doesn't include Powerpoint, whereas the 'Home and Student' edition doesn't include Outlook.
Indeed, before purchasing a copy of MS-Office, it is well-worth consulting the Microsoft web site to see which modules are included in the various versions—2007 Microsoft Office Suites.
All is not lost, however, because Microsoft provide some free viewers and converters which enable users to share files with people who have different versions of MS-Office and those don't have it installed at all.
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