Office XP compatible with Office 2K

[polymath5]

Hi all, in our office we use Office 97 with Outlook 2000 and Office 2000 with Outlook 2000. I'm starting to evaluate WinXP and OfficeXP.

My question is if I create/modify/etc. Word, Excel, and Outlook's pst file, will I still be able to access them without problems from the older office software?

Thanks!

 

[deh]

Hi,
We have started bringing in Win XP/Office XP(2002)machines in an environment that primarily ran WIN9x/Office 97 with a few Office 2000/Win 2000 machines and there seems to be no compatibility issues with any of the 3. They all seem compatible and formatting seems to hold. So if you currently use both Office 2000 and Office 97 expect bringing Office XP machines into the environment to be just as seamless as when you brought in the 2000s.

HTH.

PS. If anyone has ran into any compatibility issues with any or all of the three please post, I am just conveying my experience with it.

 

[polymath5]

Thanks! I'll install OfficeXP and give it try on some 'safe' documents and backup my .pst and let it loose on it.

 

[Orcist]

We are having a problem with Win2000 after installing office XP. Excel documents cannot be launched anywhere outside Excel without the following error message: {Cannot find the file "(path&filename)" (or one of its components). Make sure path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available.} The same error is encountered using a right click on a filename in the explorer view and selecting open with and selecting excel. Documents won't load but it brings up multiple copies of excel. Does anyone have a clue to what the problem could be?? There are no weird programs installed except visual studio.net with VB and VC++. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Jovah]

Orcist,

So you can open Excel files only if you first open Excel, then browse to your file?
It sounds like .xls files are <incorrectly> associated with the old-version of the Excel executable file (or something else.) If so,you'll need to re-associate Excel files w/ the new version of the Excel.exe file. To try this, open up explorer, go to &quot;Tools&quot; then &quot;Folder Options&quot; then &quot;File Types&quot;. Scroll down to &quot;.xls&quot; and click &quot;change.&quot; Click &quot;other&quot; in the next window that opens so you can browse to the new Excel XP executable file (it should be in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10)That might do the trick; let me know if it works....

Matt

 

[tonymullen]

We have had some problems with accessing older versions of excel documents in XP when the file resides on the network. It does not alway happen, but sometimes Excel XP believes that the file is locked for editing by another user. Copying the file locally, editing it and copying it back up does solve the issue but it is a bit of a pain.

 

[combo]

M remarks mostly concern compatibility of Word and Excel versions.

In theory there should be backward compatibility between office versions, but looking forward each new version adds some new features. So, you can lose some new features even if you can open a document created in higher version.

There is a bigger problem if you use VBA to manipulate spreadsheet. In office 97 VBA 5 version was used, next offices (2k and XP) uses VBA 6, with some enhancements comparing to VBA 5. Additionally, There are some changes in object models of office applications (new objects and/or properties), so you should carefully use your VBA applications in lower wersions.

Combo

 

[access64]

I am also experiencing this problem. File is locked by user. Has anyone found a better fix besides copying files to local machine first?

 

[Bailey05]

We recently upgraded from Office 97 to Office XP and found some unusual problems with Tables and Embedded objects. For example:

User1 creates a document in Word 97 and creates multiple tables and text. The doc is saved. Then User2 opens the same doc in Word XP, no conversion problems are found. All tables are viewable.

Now if User2 edits the doc and resaves it. User1 then opens the doc in Word 97 and here is were the problems occur. The Tables disappear and are not visable. However, the text is still present. On other Office XP PCs the tables appear normally. Is this a VB5 vs VB6 issue?

Embedded objects like checkboxes and text fields also have problems. When a Word XP doc is created and the embedded objects are created, users using Word 97 cannot use the embedded objects. When trying to access them Word 97 reverts to the VB editor and then locks the doc out. Is this another problem with VB5 vs VB6?

Note: Both these suites are installed on WinNT SP6a workstations...B