Relative merits of Office 2000 over Office 97 (2000)

Topic

New Reply

My college (Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts) is still installing Office 97 on new computers, even though it has a site license for 2000. Someone seems to think that 97 is a better (more stable, etc.) product than 2000. I understand that this is definitely not the case. Can anyone point me to articles, quotes, etc., that supports my point? Thanks! -Jon Aske

Reply | Quote

Replies

Just as a matter of interest, I understood that having a license for 2000 does NOT give you a license for earlier versions – you can only do that if you already own sufficient licenses for 97 as well.

I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere …

Reply | Quote

site licenses can downgrade to a lower version. they need permission from MS if it’s not spelled out in the site license.

Reply | Quote

I’d start here on wopr with Woddy’s back issues of WOW.

2000 *is* much more stable and has better features in all apps. If you are using Outlook, 2000 is the best choice.

Reply | Quote

I guess it depends on the needs of the users. O2K SP1 is as stable as O97 SP2 IMO. O2K has better exporting to web than 97. Word & Excel can export as a web page, and pull the same document back in which is nice. I don’t remember that feature in 97. Front Page 2000 does a much better job of not messing with changes you make to the HTML. Since I’m a font junkie, I like how O2K shows what the fonts look like in the drop down menus.

Reply | Quote

Office 2000 is superior.
However, for Word 9, you have the SDI, instead of the Word 8 MDI, interface.

I find that SDI is better because it allows a different set of menus and toolbars for each doc.

Macros from Word 8 could be affected by changes in Word 9, especially the SDI/MDI issue. See the example in the VBA Code Snippets template at my URL below. Do NOT run the code in Word 8.

Reply | Quote

Also, any Access 97 databases will need to be converted to Access 2000 for them to work properly. This is no small task in a large organisation. You have to upgrade all the people using a particular database in one fell swoop or some simply won’t be able to use them properly.
And Outlook 2000 SR-2 is horrible. I’d advise Office 2000 SR-1. Been using it for a year (whilst supporting 97 SR-2 for other people) and 2000 beats it hands down. Still has loads of old bugs, but hey, after 10 years you grow kind of fond of them!

Reply | Quote