Word 2000 vs. Word 2003

[joydale]

I am looking for resources for information about upgrading from Word 2000 to Word 2003. I was hoping to find information on benefits of Word 2003 over 2000 for a business case.

Could anyone provide any info/links on this topic?

It seems like most of the available material is now related to an Office 2003 to 2007 upgrade.

Thanks very much!

 

[fumei]

Microsoft itself no longer has 2000 to 2003 upgrading information.

Are you trying to only change Word, or Office?

IMO, Word 2003 is decidely better than 2000. I hate 2007 though.

How, exactly, are you going to upgrade? Do you have a legal copy of 2003?

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[joydale]

Thanks for responding Gerry!

We are already on Outlook 2003, but for the rest of the office applications we are on Office 2000.

I like 2003 better too. My company is trying to determine if they should buy licensing to upgrade to 2007 and then just implement 2003. So we're trying to build a business case for rolling out Office 2003.

I was hoping there might be some repository of information that contained details about going from 2000 to 2003 to use as reference for the business case document.

Would you know of anything?

Thanks again!

 

[fumei]

if they should buy licensing to upgrade to 2007 and then just implement 2003."

How would go about doing that? How would they implement 2003? Where would they get the install disks?

You can no longer easily purchase 2003, as it is not available retail. Microsoft will not sell licensing for 2007, and then give 2003 disks.

As I mentioned, even Microsoft no longer seems to have 2000 to 2003 upgrade information. Try googling, but even then many sites from the Google search have links to (supposedly) Microsoft 2000 to 2003 information pages...and if you go there it is not 2003, but 2007 information.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[joydale]

Our contract rep apparently had some kind of special arrangement, so I guess that's how it worked out.

Thanks, I'll keep looking.

Take care.

 

[tf1]

There's still plenty of Office 2003 Media Kits available from the wholesale suppliers, so it shouldn't be a problem getting it.

The obvious advantage of going to Office 2003 is that Outlook and Office will become a suite again and all the things you can't do because of the differing versions will be sorted (like MailMerge and Word as Outlook's editor which worked reasonably well in 2003).

IMHO, Office 2003 is the best version since Office 2000 and a big step forward.

I wouldn't like to have to create a case for Office 2007 though because apart from Outlook 2007, I can only think of reasons NOT to upgrade.


Regards: tf1

 

[joydale]

Thank you very much!

 

[fumei]

I wouldn't like to have to create a case for Office 2007 though because apart from Outlook 2007, I can only think of reasons NOT to upgrade."

LOL!

I did have to write up a case regarding 2007, and that is exactly what I wrote...do NOT do this! There are no valid reasons for an upgrade, and plenty of reasons against it.

Not the least of which is the millions of dollars it would cost us.

Yup, as far as I am concerned, they got it right with 2003 - other than the normal caveat that it is a Microsoft product.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[tf1]

Hi Gerry

Who could honestly say that productivity is not going to be hit by upgrading? I would guess that productivity may reach the same level only after a significant period. Adding to that is the cost of the upgrade, the cost of training and other procedural changes; the result could be a major embarrassment to say the least.

My real concern is that if MS doesn't plug the gaps in the new interface for Office 14, they really could lose out to something like Open Office or Google Docs.

Terry

Regards: tf1

 

[fumei]

I have been using Word since DOS Version 1. I still have Word at home, as I take work home. I would hate to have to leave Word behind, as I know it well. However, for my own purposes (at home) I have switched to Open Office. I will not personally go to 2007.

Hopefully I will be retired from work before they get to 2007 (...+). I will probably make it. Heck most of our PCs are running Windows 2000 still. We are usually at least four years behind. We are only now starting to upgrade some machines to Windows XP.

We are using Office 2002 (XP), and a couple of years ago I was asked to do the business case for Office 2002 to Office 2003. I also recommended strongly that we do not. Yes, 2003 is better than 2002. No question.

However, it would have cost us roughly $10 million.

Are the "betters" between 2003 and 2002, when we are NOT using any Sharepoint servers, yadda yadda yadda, worth ten million bucks?

No.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[MasterRacker]

Justifying a large investment may be difficult, but from a personal use standpoint, Word 2007 is the best version I've used yet. The ribbon takes a little getting used to but once you do, frequent tasks like formatting via styles, etc. are much quicker. (The vast majority of Word users don't know how to use styles, thus negating half the power of the program.). One thing I was pleasantly surprised to find is that, even with all the new eye candy, on the fly style previews, etc. Office 2007 does not seem to run any slower than Office 2003 did on the same machine.

A couple of points:

In Word 2000, MS changed the way tables are handled to mimic HTML tables, and ver 1.0 of this model sucked. 2002, then 2003 fixed this.

Word's handling of embedded graphics has always sucked. However, each version since '97 has gotten better in this area to the point that I can't really find much suckiness in 2007.


_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[fumei]

(The vast majority of Word users don't know how to use styles, thus negating half the power of the program.).

I completely agree. This is true.

However, for people like me - and I ONLY use Styles, I do not have a single instance of "Normal" in ANY document - the interface makes things slower and MORE difficult. 2007 made things worse for people who DO know how to use the power of Word. It is worse for people who DO understand Word.

Further, and I will admit this is a bugbear for me, WHY did they remove an extremely useful part of the Object Model? I (and many many other like me) used FileSearch. It was (and is in versions up to 2003) a much much more powerful tool than DIR.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

It was deliberately removed from the Object Model. It is part of the dumbing down, and the increasingly restrictive aspects of Office.

As I have mentioned, I have used Word since Version 1, and for me 2007 is the not only the worst version of Word ever, it ranks up there as one of the worst applications I have tried. I really do not like it at all. I flatly will not use it.

So once it takes over as the majority of questions, my usefulness here will be over. I will not use it.

Which is why I have switched to Open Office at home. I want to get up to speed and comfortable with it, as I can see that is likely where I will end up.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[MasterRacker]

Interesting. I haven't done much with VBA other than with Access and haven't done any in Access 07 yet.

This is just pure speculation, but I wonder if MS isn't trying to move that functionality to SharePoint? They may be assuming that the future majority of Office development will be done within a MOSS environment.

_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[TonyJollans]

The ribbon takes a little getting used to but once you do, frequent tasks like formatting via styles, etc. are much quicker.

I have to disagree. I have been using Word 2007 for 18 months now and I am still not used to the Ribbon and I don't think there is a single thing that is quicker - if you use the mouse, everything needs at least one click more and you have to go to the top of the screen to do it as well.

Word's handling of embedded graphics has always sucked. However, each version since '97 has gotten better in this area to the point that I can't really find much suckiness in 2007.

The new Escher 2 graphics engine has not been fully implemented in Word and there are some odd effects of this in Word 2007 - a lot of graphics can't be grouped unless they are downgraded to 2003 format, for example. There are also inconsistencies between graphics in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that never used to be there and are giving some people grief.

As far as VBA goes, there has been a definite (corporate-driven) move to put what they consider to be development firmly in the hands of the developer - and move it away from the end-user. I don't know how this will go in the future but I hope the direction changes.

On the whole I am comfortable with 2007 and, like everything, there is good and bad to it, but I would have to agree with Gerry and Terry that, unless you need particular features, it is hard, if not impossible, to justify the expenditure, whether for 1 or 100,000 licences.

The question, of course, was about moving from 2000 to 2003 which, I would think, was probably a good move (especially as already on Outlook 2003) - *if* the price is right. I don't think licences for 2007 give the automatic right to use 2003 but, depending on price, it may be more sensible to go for 2007 so long as you recognise that (re-)training will be needed - how much depends on how you use the product. Whatever you go to, Office 2000 is now old and well out of support (2002 - theoretically - is about to go out of support as well), not that that necessarily matters, again depending on your use of, and level of satisfaction with, it; it's a pretty solid product.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[fumei]

so long as you recognise that (re-)training will be needed "

Which is a great deal of my point (of view).

Going from 2000 to 2003 may require some (re)training, but the switch is fairly easy. And the product (2003) is much better. It is a worthwhile switch.

However, IMO, going from 2000 to 2007 will require training. And unless there is something vitally valuable in 2007 - and I fail to see what that would be - it is more pain (and money) than it is worth.

As Tony points out, and what I was asking, buying a license for 2007 does not (I think) give an automatic right to use 2003. I would be very surprised if it did.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[tf1]

If you mean an Open Licence, it licences you to use ANY version of Word up to the current version at date of purchase. If you also include the Software Assurance element, then it covers you for any version for the duration of the licence period (or forever if you renew the SA every 2 years).

Downgrade rights are normally not granted for OEM or FPP Retail products (but there are a few exceptions which will be in Licence with the pack). Note that OS and Applications have different downgrade rights: normally all OS licences exclude any downgrades.

You can download a Microsoft document about downgrade rights in the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...fd-7f4e-46cb-8117-8275f7683d3f&DisplayLang=en

Regards: tf1