9/16/2004 -- Just weeks after releasing the Word 2003 Expert and Excel 2003 Expert exams, Certiport -- the company that manages the Office Specialist certification program for Microsoft -- announced that two more exams in the 2003 Office Specialist track have launched: PowerPoint 2003 and Access 2003.

The exams debuted in late August and are now available at Certiport testing centers worldwide.

With these exams live, candidates now can pursue the high-level Office Specialist Master 2003 title. Becoming a Master requires both Expert-level exams plus PowerPoint and either Access or Outlook.

Outlook is now the only exam in the track that has yet to be released.

The rollout of the 2003 exams has recently picked up significant pace thanks to a change in strategy by Certiport, according to Christina Goodwin, the company's exam development manager.

The Office Specialist exams have always tested candidates' hands-on skills using a live application environment -- until late last year. That's when Certiport released the Word 2003 exam, which takes place entirely within a simulation of the application, instead of using Word itself.

While the original plan called for most of the 2003 exams to also be simulation, Goodwin told CertCities.com recently that so far, the only exam to have a simulated environment is the Word 2003 Core.

"We regrouped after releasing our prototype (the Word 2003 exam) ... we were not completely satisfied," she explained. "We [want to] release new exams in simulation that are faster and more efficient and closer to the live environment.

"We haven't moved away from simulation...we'd just like to improve it [and] we didn't want to hold up exam release while doing that," she continued. "Every day there's something new out there, something bigger and better, so we're continuing to look at these options."

According to Goodwin, the Outlook 2003 exam may still be released in a simulation environment. "Of all of our exams, Outlook is the most difficult and complicated to produce in a live environment," she said. As for when this might launch, she said, "We really don't just have a time frame -- we're working on it."

When asked about the limited availability of the Office Specialist 2003 exams in some areas, Goodwin said that while Certiport makes the exam available to all testing centers, its up to each center when to make it live. She said the company expects the overall availability to expand as more training centers roll out courses for the 2003 track. "The demand for exams specific to release takes about 12 to 18 months to increase, so we're still early days yet," she explained. "This is fairly typical."

According to Certiport, the advertised price for all Certiport exams is $75 (U.S.), but the price may vary by testing center.

For more information on the Office Specialist 2003 track, go here. -Becky Nagel