Office 2000 was not particularly stable, or fast, and if it managed to corrupt a document in some way, it'd always crash trying to open it.

> Office 97 which is widely regarded as the best version

Only in retrospect. I was in high school when it came out, and I vaguely remember one of my classmates griping about it being slow and/or bloated.

Just don't try to use cross document embedding (like putting an excel chart in a word doc) - that would blue screen my PC fairly reliably

Up till now, MS Outlook still has a Safe Mode with limited functionality that would activate in case normal Outlook won’t boot properly - I think this speaks heaps about their software quality.

I think most apps with plugins have a safe mode.

It still had its complexities but it was markedly more reliable than Office 2000, certainly. It also didn't take three days to install!