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Maybe this question should be another topic; my question is:
Are older versions of Office still available for (legal) purchase? If so, how/where can I buy them? My wife and I are still using Office Professional 2003 (on both our PC’s) and it’s adequate for our needs but does have some problems. I have often thought about upgrading but it always seemed like such a hassle for little benefit. We use Word, Excel, Outlook, Publisher, and occasionally Powerpoint and Picture Manager. (We’re not interested in subscription services because of the continuing cost.) So what’s the easiest and cheapest way to upgrade our Office version? Thanks for any advice and suggestions.

 

Great !!  Thanks so much – pressing on the text box in fact caused a “Paste” option to appear.

 

 

Well, search started working.  I’m not sure why although I did go to Search settings and removed C:\ from excluded folders, so that maybe that did it.  Anyway, it seems to be working now.  Thanks for the comments.

Sorry, PKCano, I forgot to mark “Notify me…” so I didn’t get your message until just now.

Update History:

2 “Quality Updates” successfully installed on 2/10/2021

Most recent driver update on 1/31/2021

MS Defender Updates on 2/15 (2), 2/12, 2/10, 2/9, 2/8, etc

“Other Updates:”  Software Removal  Tool on 2/10/2021

Nothing looks suspicious to me…..

The only entry in the Add In Manager is a line that says “Exchange Extensions Property Page” with a checked box in front of it. I have no idea what it is.

 

Additional info:  the message is properly received if there is an email address in BOTH the To: field and the BCC: field.  The message is received as plain text if there is an email address in BCC:  but NOT in the To: field.

In Windows 10, my understanding is the Windows Defender is used.  I haven’t added or changed the antivirus setup .

 

Found the solution, I think.  By accident, I put “Windows Search Settings” into the search box and was able to change the settings to “Enhanced” on the resulting screen which searched the entire PC.  After doing this, and letting the indexing complete, the files on my PC were displayed in response to a search box entry.  I removed the gpedit.msc changes mentioned previously, and did not have to do any registry changes.  The problem seemed to be that Windows was not set to index the PC files and that’s why nothing showed up.  It seems to working as expected now.  Thanks for your suggestions.

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

Windows 10 Pro

Thanks Microfix for your suggestion.  I did what you said, disabling all three items in gpedit.msc, then rebooted but no change in the results.  I am wondering if these changes have to be enabled somehow, or if something else has to be done.  Thanks for any further suggestions.

Brief update:  our new PC’s arrived, and I installed Office 2003 on Windows 10 with no problems so far, including Outlook 2003.  Everything seems to work Ok and I am a happy camper.  Thanks again !!

2 users thanked author for this post.

Paul T, b

Thanks to everyone for all your comments.  New PC’s are scheduled to arrive on Feb 8.  My plan as of now  is to install Office 2003 with compatibility pack and see if it works.  If it does, we will continue to use it at least for a while.  Next problem is to figure how to transfer DropBox  and Google Drive files to new PC’s, but that’s another story.  Thanks again !

What was your “reputable download licensing source for $50 per license per machine” and how did you know it was “reputable” not a counterfeit?

 

I also have used the Office Compatibility Pack for years and it works great with MS Word 2003, allowing me to read .docx files.

Thanks Bundaburra, for your comments.  Is your wife able to run Outlook 2003 on Windows 10?  And is Microsoft Security Essentials a good enough “reliable, competent, on-demand anti–virus program” (assuming that it, or something like it, still runs on Windows 10)?

Thanks again for all comments.  I have tried non-Microsoft Office products but all of them seem to have some incompatibilities with MS Office, some of which aren’t obvious.  So I have given up on non-Microsoft Office options just for simplicity.   It does make sense to me, however, to continue with Office 2003 Word, Excel, Publisher, and Powerpoint, then replace Outlook 2003 with something else if it doesn’t work on Windows 10.  Does Windows 10 have any “compatibility mode” that will run programs from Windows 7?  What I like about Outlook 2003 is that it seems to work without error, and I’m never sure about other programs.

Thanks to everybody for your comments.  Family Office 365 seems to cost around $100/year from any source that I found.  I’m sure Family Office 365 would address some security concerns, but I’m not sure what else I would get for my $100/year, especially if the alternative is to continue using Office 2003 for free.  For routine everyday use, can anybody list an advantage or two from Office 365 that might be worth $100/year?