Information processing may be defined as the manipulation of data to produce useful information. Over the past several years, the explosion of sophisticated computer software has dramatically changed the way computer users create documents. When word-processing, spreadsheet, and database software packages first became available to the public in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they were very different. The user interface, menus, and procedures were quite different depending on the program. As the years passed and computer software became more sophisticated, the software programs began to share many common features. Today, computer software not only shares common features, it is extremely compatible—that is, information created in one software package can be shared with that of another.

In today's modern office, computer documents often require that a combination of software packages be used together. For example, it might be necessary to place a spreadsheet in a...