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# Research Feature Overview

The Microsoft® Office 2003 Research feature provides a rich and integrated search experience. The ability to search multiple custom and third-party references and the convenience of accessing this information from within Office 2003 applications will convince users to choose the Research feature over Web-based research sites.

A rich research experience

When used with an Internet connection, the Research feature offers a variety of research resources. A number of Microsoft and third-party services are included in Office 2003, including the Dictionary, Translation, Thesaurus, Microsoft Encarta® Encyclopedia, MSN® Search, and MSN Money Stock Quotes services. The Dictionary, Thesaurus and Translation services are also available offline. Users can search multiple services at the same time.

The Research feature is also a platform for organizations to deliver their own research services and for third-party research providers to build general purpose or specialized subscription services.

Depending on which application they are using, the Research feature can also provide a robust level of engagement for users with available reference data. Users can:

- Copy text from search results to an application.
- Insert selected text from search results to an application.
- Look up subsequent terms from search results.
- Link to related Web pages.

- Filter results

  Research service providers can use forms with custom controls to allow users to filter search results.

- Use smart tag actions

  Research service providers can use smart tags to allow users to process search results more efficiently. For example, the MSN Money Stock Quotes service can use a smart tag to insert stock data in different formats, depending on the application. In Microsoft Office Word 2003, a smart tag can insert data as XML, which can be manipulated further with smart tags. In Microsoft Office Excel 2003, a smart tag can insert data as a Web query.

A research feature integrated with Office 2003

The Research feature allows users to quickly locate and use the information that they need without leaving the Office application that they are working in. The Research feature is available in Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, Microsoft Office OneNote™ 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, Microsoft Office Visio® 2003, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The Research feature interface is tightly integrated with these Office 2003 applications, so that it can extract information from the Office application or insert content into it.

Users can invoke the Research feature in an Office application in a number of ways. The most common methods are:

- Clicking Research on the Tools menu.
- Right-clicking a word or phrase and then clicking Look Up on the shortcut menu.
- Clicking a word or phrase while holding down the ALT key.

With Internet Explorer, users can work with the Research feature by clicking View on the toolbar, and then selecting Research on the Explorer Bar menu.

The Research task pane displays the word or phrase to be searched, the service or group of services being searched on, and the list of results.

After viewing the results in the Research task pane, the user can interact with the search results, which can be formatted in any way the provider has specified; the search results can also be tagged with smart tags. For example, Figure 1 shows how the Thesaurus service has integrated smart tags into its results to allow the user to insert or copy the result, or do further look up on it.

Figure 1: Word document with the Research task pane showing results from a search

This search was accomplished by right-clicking the word “powerful” within the document and then clicking Look Up. Note that the user has chosen to search services under All Reference Books. Expanding Thesaurus: English (U.K.) shows a list of search results. Users can choose to take actions that are built into the Research feature, such as copying a word, inserting it into the document (replacing the current selection and taking on the proper formatting), or doing a further look up of that word.

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