MS Office Standard 2003

[MHNI]

I have WIN98 with Office 97 (shame on me....I know...). Can MS OFFICE STANDARD 2003 upgrade my word and excel files in WIN98? Second question, if I upgrade to WIN2000 and install OFFICE STANDARD 2003, will it upgrade my Office 97 files?
thanks,

[Paul Komski]

Just to be clear - there is a difference in upgrading the versions of the various applications, Access, Excel, Word, etc and "upgrading" the various files, mdb, xls, doc, etc that they utilise.

Whan a newer application opens a file from an earlier version it should be able to use it without any problem (backwards compatibility) but may want to convert it or to save it as the new format. You need to decide at this stage what to do since the older applications will not be able to access the newer versions of the files.

When installing a newer version of Office you will be given an option to retain the older applications or whether to upgrade them. If you choose to retain them, then install the newer version into a different directory than the default one and move the shortcuts to the older versions in your start-menu somewhere else or they will be overwritten.

The relevance of this is at least twofold. You may have access to other computers on which Office97 is installed and on which you which to share your files. Retain the older versions in addition to the newer ones if you want to be able to keep creating cross-compatible documents and files. The other area relates to VBA (used for programming macros and modules) which can be fundamentally different in newer versions and require much code to be rewritten if the older version is upgraded and no longer thus available).

Although Office97 doesnt have all the modern bells and whistles of the newer versions it is IMHO a great stable version AND there are no problems associated with product activation either.

[MHNI]

thansk for the input.....so if I upgraded to WIN2000....would I still be able to use office 97? My son has a machine with XP HOME, I don't think that Office 97 would work there right?

[Paul Komski]

First Off - the Operating System is not critical to which version of Office you are running. Office 97 will work fine on WinXP Home or Pro, etc, etc.

I run Office 97 (particularly for MSAccess97) and am running Office XP (that's not windows XP) in parallel (previously I was running Office 2000 in parallel).

As mentioned earlier, if you wish to keep the old version and run the new version just watch the prompts during the installation. Don't agree, if it offers to upgrade and select a new folder (not the default) into which you should install Office 2000. Make copies or move the original shortcuts or they will be overwritten. They can be remade but it's much easier to have the originals.

The simple answer is don't upgrade; choose to keep the original office installation when prompted.

[deddard]

OFFICE 2003 will NOT RUN on win 98.
It is designed for Win 2000 with SP3 or Win XP.

[Paul Komski]

Thanks for the update. Pity about that (and useful to know).

Win98 was OK up to and including Office XP (http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/xp/sysreqs.asp) which is the latest one in my possession.