Microsoft 97 & Microsoft Office XP

[Tengu]

Can anyone help me with this query. I am very new to MS XP and i would say a basic to intermediate user of Access. Can anyone let me know if you can run Access 97 and the version that is bundled with MS XP together. Having installed MS Office XP on by new machine, i then installed Access 97, only to find that the the XP version disappeared?

thanks
Kypros Charalambous
Birmingham, England UK

 

[thornmastr]

This is not a problem. I have the developers edition of XP running with the developers edition of Office 97 and they are reasonably happy together. You probably overwrote XP with parts of 97.

The schema I use is that I load Office XP first and let it take the default standard MS path names.

When I install Office 97, the primary path name I use is Program Files\Office97 and everything works just fine with one caveat about Access. Access has this very nasty habit of starting the last version used when you double click on an mdb. So, if you last used A97, and name.mdb was developed in a2k2, and you double click it, you get A97.

The cure I find most well suited to the problem is that on my system, A97 does not know what to do with an mdb file. I have changed the A97 Access extension from mdb to A97, which works very well.
Robert Berman
Data Base consultant
Vulcan Software Services
thornmastr@yahoo.com

 

[Tengu]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your help on the above. I was told that it was impossible to use as they share the same "initiation files"?. But i will try again. I did use the default setting though so maybe this is the problem.

On another point (as you use XP), when i de-installed A79 and re-installed Office XP again, although the Word & Excel applications are on the PC they have disappeared from the start up menu. I have tried to add them, but as i am new to XP i am not sure if i am looking in the right place.

Can you provide any help here also?

once again, many thanks
Kypros

 

[thornmastr]

Kypros,

I would suggest you use the install CD’s, and beginning with the Office you installed last which I am assuming was Office 97, uninstall it first. Then do the same for Office XP.

Now that you have a machine devoid of either Office, you need to make a decision; which one do you install first. Purists will tell you to do the installs in time order so your first install will be Office 97. Which ever you choose really has little meaning; so just pick one. What you will have to do is make the primary path, the directory immediately under Program Files should be unique.

For example, my copy of Office 97 is under C:\Program Files\Office97. My copy of Office XP is under C:\Program Files\Office2002.

This should allow you to accomplish both installs without any real problems. Just pay attention to the caveat I gave you about Access, there are a number of ways around that problem.

HTH.
Robert Berman
Data Base consultant
Vulcan Software Services
thornmastr@yahoo.com

 

[Tengu]

Thanks Robert,

I will try again, and let you know how i got on.
I was starting to get newbie blues on XP.

thanks
Kypros