Among the various old Microsoft things I mess with on my Windows 2000 and XP virtual machines or laptops is Microsoft Works, which is to Office what Outlook Express is to Outlook; a separate implementation of the same product but with less features. I have seen it used by a teacher in middle school, probably because it was preinstalled on her EeePC running XP, and was confused by this strange kinda-Office that I didn’t know about at the time.

Since I like to try to reverse engineer and document the old file formats and other technologies I find, here are some notes from the things I learnt while messing with Works.

I am not planning to do much with the Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database, even though they are the three main programs bundled in the Works suite. Their file formats are already documented, and there are converters available. I am focusing on the weirder parts, the things most people don’t care much about.

I am for now focusing on Microsoft Works 8.0 and 9.0, as 8.0 is the last version with Windows 2000 support, and 9.0 is the latest version. I might go back to earlier versions later.

Subpages

• Microsoft Works Task Launcher
• Microsoft Works Calendar
• Microsoft Works Portfolio
• Default fonts in Microsoft Works Spreadsheet and Database
• Microsoft Works Word Processor Format Gallery

Shoebox

The clip art that can be inserted into Works documents relies on multiple files:

• %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Shoebox\wks7.sbc
• %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Shoebox\Blank.sbc
• %AppData%\Microsoft\Shoebox\user.sbc
• %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Works\WKSv7std.sbs
• %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Works\WKSv7std.sbt

The .sbc are Microsoft Jet databases that can be opened by Microsoft Access. They appear to contain tables that point to the .sbs and .sbt files, which both appear to be Compiled HTML files (.chm), as they start with the magic number ITSF. The .sbt file contains thumbnails, and the .sbs file contains the actual clip art. The Blank.sbc and user.sbc files imply that it is possible to add custom media to this clip art gallery, but this does not appear to be possible within Works.

Tip of the Day

Starting with Works 9.0, an XML file stores all of the tips shown under the Tip of the Day section of the Task Pane of Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database. The XML file is located at <LCID>\WksTips.xml under the installation directory, where <LCID> is a locale identifier.

Of course, I wrote an XML schema for it.