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Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

pawhe955
Grafter
Posts: 111
Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

I have a (full, legit, not trial, etc.) copy of Office 2003 Professional on my main PC - Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Publisher, etc.. Additionally, I have standalone versions of MS Project 2003 and MS Visio 2003 installed alongside.......
I have bought a copy of Office 2007 Home & Student (3-license), primarily for my daughter's laptop, and have now decided I need to bring my own experience up to 2007 (new ribbon interface & all that), so am considering installing it on the main PC. However, I am not sure if I want to upgrade Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 at this time (loads of email archived in pst files to consider, etc.). So...
If I start the install of Office 2007, can I choose which products to install - e.g. only Word, Excel and OneNote?  Will the current 2003 versions of each selected component be upgraded - so I no longer have access to the 2003 versions - or would they co-exist?  Or, worst case, is "Office" considered the product as a whole, so installing the 4-component H&S 2007 will effectively uninstall all (6) components of Office 2003.....
Just never tried playing with two versions concurrently, so don't know....
Thanks in advance,
P.
5 REPLIES 5
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

It is a parallel install.
I put the Office 2007 trial on my daughters PC and Office 2003 was still operating
hulls
Grafter
Posts: 1,699
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

I've got Office 2000 and 2007 both running. The Home & Student version doesn't include Outlook (which I found quite odd), but since I moved over to Thunderbird anyway I don't really miss it.  Roll_eyes
John
pawhe955
Grafter
Posts: 111
Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Re: Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

That's great - many thanks for the info.
(I totally forgot that H&S didn't come with Outlook - Powerpoint is the 4th app., of course -  so that's one concern out of the way.)
P.
Nick_Russell
Grafter
Posts: 562
Registered: ‎10-05-2007

Re: Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

I think you can have different versions of Office installed but only one version of Outlook.  I think this may have to be the latest version.
pawhe955
Grafter
Posts: 111
Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Re: Co-residence of different versions of Office elements

Installed this morning (selecting "leave existing Office in place", rather than "Upgrade" option during install) - all looked o.k initially - but something very wrong....  (OS is XP, BTW)
After install, on directly launching (double-clicking on) a Word doc, Word 2007 launched. O.K. - so install changed default program for ".doc". (Probaby expected). Used right-mouse click on document, tried "open with" - browsed to "office11" (e.g. Office 2003 directory) ->"winword.exe" - won't allow me to launch using that exe, and that exe not added to list of programs offered to "open with".
Tried the same with Excel - but that worked. That is, after install, directly launching an xls launched Excel 2007, but I was able to "open with" and set it to always open with Excel 2003 (which is what I want with Word as well).
So tried the other route to associate ".doc" with Word 2003 - opened an explorer window, went to Tools, Folder Options, File Types - can't seem to get ".doc" to associate with Word 2003.... (for example, icon stays as the 2007 word doc icon, and opens with 2007).
Tried launching Word 2003 from Start menu - and it stated "preparing to install"... then launched app witha blank doc. Closed this, and launched Word 2007 from start menu, and this then hit me with a dialogue box stating "configuring Office 2007" - takes ages - then Word 2007 launches.
Powerpoint - I can independently launch either PP2003 or PP2007 from the start menu, without any "configuration" dialogue boxes appearing - same goes for Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.
So just Word playing up. Seems like my OS only wants to recognise one version of Word at a time. Seems odd when the other apps are fine. Anyone any suggestions?
(My aim was to leave 2003 as the default/associated programs, so anyone else using the PC see's no difference - but when I want to start checking out/learning the new interfaces, etc., I can simply launch the 2007 apps from the start menu)....
Thanks.
P.
************   FIXED  *************
Oh, the power of Google - which of course I should have done before posting.... sorry....  But just in case anyone every comes across the Word 2003/2007 issue described:
Known issue, with a simple fix from David Overton's site at: http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2007/07/21/how-to-get-rid-of-the-installer-configuration-... :
    Use the line with Office\11.0 if you have Office 2003 installed and Office\12.0 if you have Office 2007 installed.  You can use both if you have both installed :
    reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
    reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1
Worked for me....  Smiley

****** ... well, nearly worked. Once last issue....
Above got rid of the "installing" and "configuring" screens when alternately running Word 2003 and Word 2007, but still couldn't associate .doc's with Word 2003 executable (winword.exe) in Office 11 folder.
Another Google, another answer, again simple - re-named winword.exe in Office 11 folder to winword2003.exe, and associated .doc's with that - OS now seems to be able to differentiate between the two versions of Word. Don't know why so many issues with Word, when the Excel executabe in both Office folders (11 and 12) were both excel.exe. Just another M$ anomaly, I guess.....