Microsoft released the first version of Office for Mac in 1989. It arrived before the Windows edition of Microsoft Office and combined several established Macintosh applications into one suite.
The original Mac release included Word 4.0, Excel 2.2, PowerPoint 2.01, and Mail 1.37. Microsoft initially presented it as a limited-time promotion, but the package proved useful enough to become a regular product. Later in 1989, Microsoft also released Office on CD-ROM, making it the first major Mac publisher to distribute applications on that format.
A common mix-up is confusing Office for Mac with the earlier standalone Mac applications. Microsoft Word 1.0 for Macintosh appeared in 1984, Excel followed in 1985, and PowerPoint in 1987. Those products existed separately before being bundled as Office. Another frequent mistake is choosing 1990, the approximate period associated with the first Windows version of Office.