[20][21] The core applications, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, had only minor improvements from Office XP.

Outlook 2003 received improved functionality in many areas, including better email and calendar sharing and information display, complete Unicode support, search folders, colored flags, Kerberos authentication, RPC over HTTP, and Cached Exchange mode.

Word 2003 introduced a reading layout view, document comparison, better change-tracking and annotation/reviewing, a Research Task Pane, voice comments and an XML-based format among other features.

Excel 2003 introduced list commands, some statistical functions and XML data import, analysis and transformation/document customization features.

Access 2003 introduced a backup command, the ability to view object dependencies, error checking in forms and reports among other features.

Only basic clipart and templates were included on the disc media, with most content hosted online and downloadable from within the Office application.

InfoPath 2003 was introduced for collecting data in XML-based forms and templates based on information from databases.

Microsoft released five separate editions of Office 2003: Basic, Student and Teacher, Standard, Small Business, and Professional.