Office 2003 upgrade and customisations (Office XP SP2/WinXP Pro SR1)

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I am thinking of upgrading to Office 2003 from XP (I get it for free, due to an academic site licence), but was just wondering what happens to customisations and add-ins? I like to customise my office programs fairly extensively (e.g. autocorrect and autotext entries, shortcut keys, toolbar icons, various simple macros, etc…), and was wondering if these will get transferred or just overwritten in the upgrade. If they’re overwritten, will the ‘Save my settings’ wizard work to transfer them to the new installation?

Also, I have WOPR and also an add-in from EndNote (a bibliography / reference manager program). Should I uninstall these (and other add-ins – e.g. from Acrobat) first, or just go straight ahead. Any advice appreciated!

Many thanks,

Alex

PS. If anyone thinks that it’s not worth upgrading, even though I don’t have to pay for it, please say so as well!

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My thoughts are, first, no rush to upgrade until all the kinks are known and worked out, unless you really need some of the new features. Second, you should back up all your settings. You never know what might happen to your system during a major upgrade. Try to save them to somewhere else (e.g., network folder or CD) just in case.

Since I haven’t installed Office 2003, and definitely haven’t installed it over Office XP, I can’t say for sure, but from reports here, this is the most intelligent Office “installer” MS has ever released. I believe there is a good chance that most of your settings will be preserved and migrated, but due to differences in philosophy between you and Microsoft, certain defaults might override your choices and have to be fine-tuned again. Also, while it’s very convenient to slide the old Normal.dot into the place of the new one, it’s generally recommended to start fresh to avoid creeping file corruption that can occur to templates and documents over a long period of editing. In all, I would expect that the upgrade will take a good amount of time to get back where you want it.

As an aside, when I switched to Office XP, I ended up not copying over my AutoCorrect entries, and I have been gradually recreating the ones I really use. I’m a packrat, but on rare occasions I can see the wisdom of dumping your past and starting fresh.

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My thoughts are, first, no rush to upgrade until all the kinks are known and worked out, unless you really need some of the new features. Second, you should back up all your settings. You never know what might happen to your system during a major upgrade. Try to save them to somewhere else (e.g., network folder or CD) just in case.

Since I haven’t installed Office 2003, and definitely haven’t installed it over Office XP, I can’t say for sure, but from reports here, this is the most intelligent Office “installer” MS has ever released. I believe there is a good chance that most of your settings will be preserved and migrated, but due to differences in philosophy between you and Microsoft, certain defaults might override your choices and have to be fine-tuned again. Also, while it’s very convenient to slide the old Normal.dot into the place of the new one, it’s generally recommended to start fresh to avoid creeping file corruption that can occur to templates and documents over a long period of editing. In all, I would expect that the upgrade will take a good amount of time to get back where you want it.

As an aside, when I switched to Office XP, I ended up not copying over my AutoCorrect entries, and I have been gradually recreating the ones I really use. I’m a packrat, but on rare occasions I can see the wisdom of dumping your past and starting fresh.

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Office 2003 happily accepted my Normal.dot and all my code and toolbar icons without a hitch. The Word customisations were not that extensive.

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Office 2003 happily accepted my Normal.dot and all my code and toolbar icons without a hitch. The Word customisations were not that extensive.

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Speaking from experience with Endnote, make sure you have their most recent .wll file from the EndNote website or the “Cite while you write” shortcut links won’t work.

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Thanks Leanne. I’ve already got the newest file, since I’m subscribed to the Endnote digest as well!

Thanks to everyone else for all the advice. I think I’m going to leave it a while to see if any more problems are reported, and will then have a go.

Cheers,

Alex

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Thanks Leanne. I’ve already got the newest file, since I’m subscribed to the Endnote digest as well!

Thanks to everyone else for all the advice. I think I’m going to leave it a while to see if any more problems are reported, and will then have a go.

Cheers,

Alex

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Speaking from experience with Endnote, make sure you have their most recent .wll file from the EndNote website or the “Cite while you write” shortcut links won’t work.

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