Task panes are dynamic windows that pop up in response to specific actions you're performing within a document, such as paragraph formatting or using mail merge options. Similarly, smart tags are icons that appear when you perform a particular task--simply hover your mouse over them and a drop-down menu of options will appear.

Smart tags really come into play in Word 2002, greatly expanding your options. For example, you can now place your mouse over a contact name in a letter and the menu allows you to send that person an e-mail, open their entry in your contact book in Outlook, refer to outstanding schedule commitments, and so on.

Other exciting innovations include the ability to select multiple, unconnected chunks of text (so you can cut and paste two unconnected paragraphs in one go), and the Reveal Formatting task pane, which lets you see all the formats and styles on a given selection. Use the Drawing Canvas to position pictures within a document, check out the Diagram Gallery to add business diagrams, or insert professional clip art from the Clip Organizer.

While there is only so much you would want to change in a word processing package, which is designed for simply and quickly writing documents, Microsoft has managed to improve upon an already well-executed application. --John Rennie

In older versions of Word you are able to record macros by performing a sequence of actions. In Word 2002 you can do the same, but with one important difference: macro does not remember font attributes like underline, italic, bold, style, font etc. If you're a PC guru you may probably be able to repair such incomplete macro by entering Visual Basic Editor, but if you aren't, you'll probably be helpless.

Word 2002 has also some other bad characteristics. One of them is the size of its files. A 34 Mb Word 97 file fattened to enormous 49Mb in Word 2002 and a 55 Kb file to 70 Kb.
Another is a fact that almost all of the Spelling&Grammar and Auto Text options are turned on by default. If you're not an English or an American, you need to do a lot of clicking before you can begin to work with Word normally. And poor you if you don't know what to turn off to make auto corrections and other disturbing features disappear. Try to imagine what happens if you write in Slovenian language with the English spell checker turned on! Microsoft should bear in mind that only (small) part of the world is English speaking and writing.

There are also some troubles with cut and paste (Clipboard memory seems to be unreliable).

PS
I gave Word 2002 4 stars for its basic word processing features, but only 1 star for its macros and reliability, and again only 1 star for its price. Together it's 2 stars.