Proofing Tools in an Office 2003, Outlook 2007 Environment

[RexCelestis]

Folks,

We're in the planning stages of rolling out Outlook 2007 to our company,
while maintaining all other applications of the suite Office 2003. I'm
looking for some guidance from people and organizations that might have
similar experience.

When first installed, Outlook 2007 recognizes the proofing tools currently
installed and, in our testing, functions well with them. This runs counter to
Microsoft's assertions that Office 2007 requires the 2007 proofing tools.
I've discovered that there is even a method for installing Office 2003
proofing tools so that they work in Office 2007 (see here) .

What has been the experience of companies or firms in similar situations.
What issues will we run into if we stay with the Office 2003 proofing tools?
Can we even use the Office 2007 versions?

Many thanks,

Rex

 

[Earle Horton]

Your "see here" link didn't make it to where I could see it.

Outlook 2007 or any Office 2007 application or suite comes with its own set
of Proofing Tools. Exactly which you get depends on the localized version
that you have installed. So if you installed for example the United States
English version you would now have Office 2007 versions of Proofing Tools
for English, French and Spanish. The English and Spanish versions are not
compatible with Office 2003 applications or applications designed to use the
2003 Proofing Tools, Outlook Express for example. In addition the German
Proofing Tools do not work with Outlook Express or Office 2003 compatible
applications either.

How exactly do you know that Outlook 2007 functions well with the already
installed Proofing Tools? In order to know this for sure you would have to
have installed it without any Proofing Tools of its own.

As far as I can determine, except for the English, Spanish and German
Proofing Tools, all other proofing tools are functionally equivalent between
Office versions 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. As I am not a developer, I don't
have access to the interface specs and so of course I don't know for sure.

I don't see any advantage to using the 2003 Proofing Tools over the newer
versions. In addition to the obvious incompability in the English, Spanish
and German Proofing Tools, there may be bug fixes or lexical revisions in
the tools distributed with Office 2007.

By the way I have Office 2007 Professional Plus installed with Spanish,
Galego and German Language Packs. What shows up as available in Outlook
Express are Basque, Catalan, French, Galician, Italian and Portuguese
(Brazil). It appears that backward compatibility is a greater worry than
forward compatibility.

Earle

 

[RexCelestis]

Thanks for the response.

It's not so much as choosing one set of proofing tools over an other, my
question relates to how the proofing tools will work in a mixed environment;
Office 2003 with Outlook 2007.

Rex

 

[Earle Horton]

I don't understand then. Is this on the same computer? Do you want to have
exactly the same dictionary and grammar rules for all users? Unless you are
working with a language that has had a recent spelling reform, I don't see a
potential problem.

I assume that you have read the following.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091

«Multiple versions of Outlook
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 cannot coexist with any earlier version of
Microsoft Outlook. When you install Outlook 2007, the Setup program removes
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Outlook 2002, and Microsoft Outlook
2000. The Setup program removes these versions of Outlook even if you click
to select the Keep these programs check box in the Removing Previous
Versions dialog box. Versions of Microsoft Outlook that are earlier than
Outlook 2000 will not be detected for removal. However, if you do not remove
versions of Outlook that are earlier than Outlook 2000, both versions of
Outlook will be unstable.»

Earle

 

[RexCelestis]

Earl,

You are correct. Outlook 2007 will live with Office 2003 on the desktop. It
will replace Outlook 2003, but the other applications will remain the
previous version.

Will there be any conflict with regards to the proofing tools, or gotchas we
should be aware of.

Rex

 

[Earle Horton]

Earl,

You are correct. Outlook 2007 will live with Office 2003 on the desktop.
It
will replace Outlook 2003, but the other applications will remain the
previous version.

Will there be any conflict with regards to the proofing tools, or gotchas
we
should be aware of.

I don't think so. I have Office 2007, English US version, installed on a
computer with Proofing Tools 2003, the one with thirty-seven languages
available. It has worked fine for over a year. Now if you install Outlook
2007 with English, Spanish or German Proofing Tools, there is some danger
that it will remove the 2003 versions of these Proofing Tools, but I don't
think it does that. It would be prudent to investigage on a test computer
that had been backed up just before the experiment though.

In my experience with this system the 2003 Proofing Tools are available to
applications that know how to use only them, i.e. Outlook Express and MSN
Mail.

Earle

 

[RexCelestis]

I don't think so. I have Office 2007, English US version, installed on a

computer with Proofing Tools 2003, the one with thirty-seven languages
available. It has worked fine for over a year. Now if you install Outlook
2007 with English, Spanish or German Proofing Tools, there is some danger
that it will remove the 2003 versions of these Proofing Tools, but I don't
think it does that. It would be prudent to investigage on a test computer
that had been backed up just before the experiment though.

In my experience with this system the 2003 Proofing Tools are available to
applications that know how to use only them, i.e. Outlook Express and MSN
Mail.

Earle

Thanks for the re-assurance, Earle.

 

[braam]

Hi Rex,

We have recently rolled out Outlook 2007 with Exchange 2007 to replace
Notes. We picked up that the "check spelling as you type" feature does
not seem to work with Office 2003 and Outlook 2007. Most of our Office
2003 installations didn't include Outlook 2003 so Outlook 2007 was a
"clean install". On the ones that had Outlook 2003 we removed it as part
of the Outlook 2007 installation.

We have tried a lot of fixes but can't seem to get the "check spelling
as you type" feature to work. It works if you upgrade the entire Office
installation to 2007 but not with Outlook 2007 and the rest on 2003. OS
is XP.

Did you pick up on this as part of your testing?

Cheers,

Braam.

 

[RexCelestis]

Braam,

We did notice this, and a few other missing features. This document
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102109301033.aspx, explains the
details.

Cheers,

Rex

 

[braam]

Hi Rex,

Thanks for the document! The answer that I needed was at the bottom of
page 9

We have really had a great experience with the project. There are a
couple of small issues that we have ironed out but this one required
more digging! Thank you for the answer!

How has your rollout been going?

Cheers,

Braam.

 

[pensio]

If you have other proofing tools languages other than English, French and
Spanish installed from Office 2003, you will be able to use them in Outlook
2007. However, you will not be able to use proofing tools languages from
2007 version with Office 2003.