Clearly the smartest software bundling move Microsoft ever made was combining Word, Excel and PowerPoint into Microsoft Office, first for the Mac in 1989 and then for Windows in 1990.

Microsoft Word, which Microsoft originally (internally) called Multi-Tool Word, was released in 1983 for MS-DOS, in 1985 for the Mac and in 1989 for Windows. Excel was launched in 1985 for the Mac and in 1987 for Windows. Also in 1987, Microsoft released PowerPoint for the Mac, essentially a version of an application called Presenter that was created by Forethought, a company . In 1990, PowerPoint for Windows was released.

When Excel was first developed, Microsoft already had a spreadsheet called MultiPlan, but it was not selling well on the MS-DOS platform. The company decided it needed a much better offering to compete against Lotus 1-2-3, the best-selling spreadsheet program at the time.