Tips before installing Office2003 on Windows7 PC

Topic

New Reply

Hi, this is both a an Office 2003 (especially Excel 2003) question and a Windows 7 question; I hope I’m posting it in the right place. I would like advice before I install Office 2003 Professional on my new Windows 7 Professional, 32 bit Dell Vostro laptop.

The laptop comes with a trial version of Office 2010 installed. I don’t want that and would be happy to delete it. (There is a potential side issue with that — see below). If I ever change my mind, I can always buy it.

Now, for me, the only crucial, killer app in MS Office 2003 is Excel; for the rest I’m happy to use Open Office equivalents. But I use Excel daily, often for mission-critical work purposes. I want ZERO problems (or at least none in addtion to the usual Excel 2003 quirks). A Google search reveals some folks have no problems at all running MSO 2003, in particular Excel 2003. on a Windows 7 machine, while other report bugs, freezing, crashes etc. So I am wary.

It would appear to me I have a few options (this is the part where I’d be happy for anyone to jump in and correct me):
1) Just install MSO 2003 and hope for the best.
2) Uninstall MSO 2010, then install MSO 2003.
3) Install MSO 2003 within Windows 7’s Virtual Windows XP mode. (My machine has 4 GB of RAM, only up to 2.4 GB of which is available to XP mode, which is fine; additionally the folks at Dell say I can, if desired, routinely change the RAM available to XP mode to 2.4 GB max whenever I want to use XP mode, then change it back to something very low (say 512 or 256 mb) when switching back to Windows 7 mode)
4) Uninstall MSO 2010, then install MSO 2003 within Windows 7’s Virtual Windows XP mode.

Any thoughts?

As for the side issue about uninstalling MSO 2010: it resides on a partitioned “Q drive” called “Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010 (Protected)”. This is how it arrived from Dell. It doesn’t seem so easy to remove. When I click on it I get an “Access denied” message. I tried to “take ownership” as administrator by right-clciking and attempting this through the Security tab, but no go; it just seems to be squatting there. Is it in fact removable / unistallable? I’m a bit confused as when I go into Control Panel to the Uninstall section I actually see three apparently relevant items: “MS Office 2010”, “MS Office Clcik-to-Run 2010”, and “MS Office 2010 _English”. I’ve not yet actually tried to uninstall any of them for fear of screwing something up. Any guidance here?

Sorry for so many sub-issues… I’d be grateful for any advice.

Reply | Quote

Replies

I’d uninstall all three, and restart the computer, before installing Office 2003.
Then, install Office 2003, and following the installation, run Windows Update several times, to install all the relevant updates (there are a lot!).
Start > All Programs > Windows Update

If you like, a good practice is to copy the installation CD to a folder on the C: drive, and to actually run the installation from the C: drive folder. With today’s huge hard drives, even on laptops, the loss of space is trivial, and if you have to make any adjustments to the installation, it proves convenient, since you never have to find the installation CD. To copy the whole CD, including hidden files, you should change the folder view settings, before copying; in any Explorer window, look under: Organize > Folder and search options.
The Office 2003 suite of applications runs very well on Windows 7.

File formats for the major document applications, including Excel, changed with Office 2007; you should get the Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats from Microsoft, and install it (after doing all the updates). Then, run Windows Update again. (I’m not kidding; there will be more updates to do after installing the Compatibility Pack because of the Office 2007 files added to the installation.)

You are running a 32-bit version of Windows 7, so you don’t have the option to install a 64-bit version of Office applications. Someone, who wanted to be able to use really, really large spreadsheets might want to do that, but installing a 64-bit Office 2010 application can preclude installing earlier 32-bit versions of Office apps. Virtualization is a solution to that problem. That’s what the “Q drive” for Click-to-Run 2010 is all about: a way to run Office 2010 apps without creating compatibility problems with earlier versions of Office. It is a solution to a problem I would advise you not to have, anytime soon. For the moment, dump it, install O2003 and get on with your updates.

Reply | Quote

You should never install an older version of Office after a new version. So, if you really need Office 2003 uninstal Office 2010 first.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

If your pre-install Office 2010 truely resides on a separate partition you can use any good partitioning app, including the included Disk Manager in Win 7, to delete the partition in question, the extend your C Drive to include the unallocated space which results. I use Partition Wizardfor this purpose. You may find that depending on where the Q partition is physically located on your HD the Win 7 Disk Manager may or may not be able to handle this chore. I would use a 3rd party app for this.

Reply | Quote

I run Office 2003 Professional on Windows 7 64 bit Pro and have never had a single negative issue. In fact, I can even pin spreadsheets and documents to the appropriate Taskbar jump lists. I was pleasantly surprised to see that functionality in Office 2003.

Reply | Quote

Before you delete any partition as Ted suggests, Make sure there is nothing else there that you need.

Reply | Quote

The Q: drive required by Click-To-Run is not a partition — it is a virtual drive.

And, the point of the Q: drive is to allow Office 2010 to be installed without affecting any of the programs installed in the base system.

Here’s a link with more information:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/11/06/click-to-run-delivering-office-in-the-21st-century.aspx

Reply | Quote

A belated thanks to everyone who’s responded — there seems to be a lot of good advice here. I did notice, though, that no one liked my idea of installing Office 2003 in Windows 7’s XP mode. To my (admittedly techically naive) eye it seems like it could be a simple, elegant solution. Or would it be tempting fate?

Reply | Quote

A belated thanks to everyone who’s responded — there seems to be a lot of good advice here. I did notice, though, that no one liked my idea of installing Office 2003 in Windows 7’s XP mode. To my (admittedly techically naive) eye it seems like it could be a simple, elegant solution. Or would it be tempting fate?

It may not be tempting fate, but XP Mode is best left for software that loves to run in XP but gives Windows 7 heartburn. Since Office 2003 is Windows 7 compatible, it offers better resource allocation and performance benefits over XP Mode. :cheers:

Reply | Quote

and to you , sir :cheers:

Reply | Quote

Greetings,

Last night (1/18) I installed Office Pro 2003 Win32 on my new laptop which is running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OS with Office Starter 2010 installed on it which I have not accessed.
The Office Pro 2003 disc came with the Windows XP Pro Upgrade Student License and Business Contact Manager discs. Office 2003 seems to have installed correctly with these updates:

Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 (27 updates includes SP3)

Microsoft Office File Validation Add-in:
Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2553065)

Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System (4 updates includes SP3)

However; having read this thread (after the fact) it seems I should have uninstalled Office Starter 2010 first which I did not do.

Where do I go from here?
Should I attempt to uninstall 2010 only or both and reinstall 2003 ? Or leave it alone?
What would be the ramification of reinstallation since 2003 is an academic license and this is the 2nd computer it’s been installed on ?

Thanks in advance

Reply | Quote

A belated thanks to everyone who’s responded — there seems to be a lot of good advice here. I did notice, though, that no one liked my idea of installing Office 2003 in Windows 7’s XP mode. To my (admittedly techically naive) eye it seems like it could be a simple, elegant solution. Or would it be tempting fate?

You should have no problem whatsoever installing Office 2003 in Windows 7, once you have uninstalled all other versions of Office and then restarted the computer. I run Office 2003 in Windows 8, and it has absolutely no problems whatsoever, except when I try to open a DOCX file! (DOCX is Office 2007 format)

Running Office 2003 in XP Mode would be unsatisfactory for two reasons:

* It would run slower than if you ran Office directly in Windows 7.
* You will have to keep up with all of your Windows and anti-virus updates in XP mode as well as in Windows 7. Too much of a hassle.

If you had no choice, then I would say use XP Mode. But in this case, it’s completely unnecessary. You will have no trouble installing and running Office 2003 in Windows 7.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

Reply | Quote

Just uninstall 2010 should have few problems. If you do you can put in the 2003 disk and choose repair which will put back any files deleted when uninstalled 2010.

Reply | Quote

Actually, unless you experience any problems with Office 2003, I would leave Office 2010 alone. If you uninstall it, I don’t think you can get it back if you decide you want it for any reason (like manipulating docx files).

Jerry

Reply | Quote

Actually, unless you experience any problems with Office 2003, I would leave Office 2010 alone. If you uninstall it, I don’t think you can get it back if you decide you want it for any reason (like manipulating docx files).

Jerry

Actually, that shouldn’t be an issue. Though our entire office is now running MS Office 2010, for years people resisted because they much prefer the 2003 menu interface. (Some still hate the ribbon interface after using it for almost a year now!) To deal with manipulating .docx or .xlsx files, I just installed FileFormatConverters.exe available from Microsoft to all of the computers in our office – be they XP or Win 7.. You can get the File Converter for free here;

http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=3

It converts the Word, Excel and Powerpoint files back into 2003 format and allows you to edit / manipulate them to your hearts content, though when you save, it’s saved in 2003 format and not the original 2007 / 2010 format. Note that with this solution you can (on some rare occasions) run into problems when dealing with highly complex spreadsheets or Word documents that make use of features only available in those versions of Office.

As a side note, for those of our employees who STILL hate the ribbon interface and just can’t get their heads around how to get things done using the Ribbons that they could easily do using 2003’s menus, I’ve given them a shortcut in their browsers to this page: http://tinyurl.com/oourom9

One of the most useful pages Microsoft have produced in my opinion. Takes you to a Microsoft page called “Learn where menu and toolbar commands are in Office 2010 and related products” (I think I may have originally learnt about it in these forums somewhere)

Has visual guides for Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, Project, Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Publisher and Visio – The guide has been invaluable to some of our employees and even though I’ve (after MUCH persistence) now gotten quite used to the Ribbon Interface, I still occasionally refer to those guides from time to time. For the record, I “still” prefer the 2003 Menu interface to this day because I think it’s a far more productive way of working, probably because I’d gotten so used to it after using it for so many years. :rolleyes:

Hope it helps..

Andy

Reply | Quote

As BrianWild7 mentioned, the information at the link: Click-to-Run: Delivering Office in the 21st Century will help.

Here is a short excerpt from that page. Pay particular attention to list item 3 and the paragraph that follows:

What is Click-to-Run?

Click-to-Run is a new software delivery mechanism built by the Office product team. It’s based on core virtualization and streaming technologies from the Microsoft App-V team in Cambridge, MA. Click-to-Run is optimized for home users on broadband connections (at least 1Mbps), and there are three key pillars of the investment:

[*]It’s fast. Home users can stream Office and be running their apps in as little as 90 seconds (under 5 minutes on average), or about 10% of the time it would take otherwise. The products still run locally utilizing the PC’s resources, they don’t “run in the cloud”.
[*]With Click-to-Run, it’s easier to always be running the latest and most secure version of Office. Click-to-Run users get the latest bits right away (rather than old bits that need to be patched immediately, which can take another 60 minutes over the internet). Click-to-Run users also get updated automatically over time, with no need to download or install patches. The product seamlessly updates itself in the background.
[*]It’s low impact, and co-exists with other software on the machine. Click-to-Run products are virtualized, so they don’t conflict with other software. For instance, users can run Office 2007 for their production scenarios while they evaluate a trial of Office 2010. This addresses a major user pain point.
[*]

Click-to-Run products also take up about half the disk space of normal products, they repair more completely, and they won’t break other software installed on the PC because they have private copies of all of their files and registration.

So, it seems it’s OK to install/run Microsoft Office Pro 2003 alongside of the pre-installed Click-to-run Microsoft Office Pro 2010 Trial.

Reply | Quote

As BrianWild7 mentioned, the information at the link: Click-to-Run: Delivering Office in the 21st Century will help.

Here is a short excerpt from that page. Pay particular attention to list item 3 and the paragraph that follows:

So, it seems it’s OK to install/run Microsoft Office Pro 2003 alongside of the pre-installed Microsoft Office Pro 2010 Trial.

Click-to-run is the install technology used to deliver Office 2010 or Office 365 Home Premium using the internet. It is most likely not the technology used for pre-installed Office 2010. All the prior recommendations for uninstalling the pre-installed versions of Office before installing Office 2003 still stand.

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

Click-to-run is the install technology used to deliver Office 2010 or Office 365 Home Premium using the internet.

Yes, that is one of the uses of Click-to-run.

It is most likely not the technology used for pre-installed Office 2010. All the prior recommendations for uninstalling the pre-installed versions of Office before installing Office 2003 still stand.

In this case, according to the OP:

… As for the side issue about uninstalling MSO 2010: it resides on a partitioned “Q drive” called “Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010 (Protected)”…

so, apparently, Click-to-run is used for pre-installed Office in some cases.

I agree with you that if the pre-installed “Trial” version is installed in the “normal” way (as in the Office Pro 2007 Trial pre-installed in my Gateway Windows 7 x64 computer), it should be uninstalled before installing another version of Office. I have edited my post to refer to the Click-to-run case.

Reply | Quote