Office XP is an absolute pig! If you want to upgrade, then go for Office 2000. XP is full of horrible popups and what used to take a couple of easy steps [eg opening a template] now takes several, and in Word there is a nasty 'menu' box that takes over 1/3 of the screen and lists templates next to recently-opened documents [whoops just overwritten the wrong document - doh], mail merges are a nightmare unless you know visual basic terminology and are unnecessarily fiddly...and probably lots lots else that I never discovered. Speaking as an ex-secretary turned IT bod, you are not going to be very popular!!
Wow, I have had the opposite experience as everyone. There are many new features with office xp that are extremely helpful that excel 97 do not have. To name a few...Excel pivot table are greatly improved, modifying 'links' in excel xp....in Word we have Reveal Formatting-extremely helpful feature and Tables in Word XP are soo much more flexible, we now have a clipboard of 24 items....in Outlook there is the new feature of 'Group Schedules' and now Contacts is your mane address book (pab no longer exists) so that we can share, copy and email distribution lists....and these are just a few benefits.
I was the project mngr moving 1600 users to office xp (from 97), it took us 10 months (for a gov't agency). Yes, I have found flaws with Office xp...like any other new software programs...we take the good and the bad.
One last thing to consider is how Microsoft charges for uprgades with 'software insurance'. But this only effects larger organizations.
I am not trying to argue with anyone, I just hope Arthur1 keeps his options open.
-tazman
Thanks for the advice. We most likely with go with office Xp, I have used if for a few months and I really like the adtability of the software itself. Thank you for your time. If you know of any specific issues especially with macros or other common items in Access please let me know.
Hi Arthur1, if you email me, I will give you a copy of conversion files for all of Office XP. I copied Microsoft's conversion file and then added my own stuff...the conversion files list the differences from Office 97 apps to Office XP apps.
Our Acc Db's and macros have converted just fine...but we have a couple Db's that were programmed in an old vb language that we have to completely re-write. MS TechNet was very helpful for converting the Db's.
I would also recommend XP Office .We upgraded to office2000 and had nothing but issues.Outlook crashing, and printing preference issues meant we rolled back to office 97 while we tried to solve the problems.We contacted Microsoft with no luck and then we then tried XP ffice and have had no issues at all. So far all problems we had with office 2000 have been fixed purely by upgrading to XP office so I would recommend it.
Sooner or later you are going to have to anyway so think of it in that light also. We uninstalled 97 first before and have had no issues.
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