Microsoft’s MOS (Microsoft Office Specialist) certification is meant for people in any industry and with various job roles who want to demonstrate a high-level of proficiency with Microsoft’s Office applications. Microsoft has positioned MOS exams such that they “provide a valid and reliable measure of technical proficiency and expertise by evaluating your overall comprehension of Office or Microsoft Project applications, your ability to use their advanced features, and your ability to integrate the Office applications with other software applications.“ The MOS got its start back in 1998 as the MOUS certification, Microsoft Office User Specialist, with exams on Office 97 applications. In mid 2002, Microsoft changed the name to MOS as well as stopped certifying people on Office 97 products. However, these Office 97 certifications “will not be retired or otherwise invalidated.” The same lifetime rule applies to the new MOS certifications. There are no prerequisites for MOS certifications, although some MOS certifications build on others.

Passing any single Core MOS exam, offered in more than 100 countries and in 18 different languages, results in a MOS certification for the related product.

There are five exams which compose the entry-level Office 2000 Core certifications. To achieve the mid-level Expert certification, the candidate must pass one expert exam. By passing all five of these exams, Word 2000 Expert, Excel 2000 Expert, PowerPoint 2000 Core, Access 2000 Core, and Outlook 2000 Core, the candidate achieves the Master certification in the Office 2000 Track.

Another perk of the MOS certification is that the American Council on Education (ACE) “has issued a one-semester hour college credit recommendation for each Microsoft Office Specialist certification for Microsoft Office XP applications.“

For more information:
http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/mcp/officespecialist/default.asp

CORE EXAMS
Excel 2000 Expert ^vs 
Word 2000 Expert