"Downgrading" from Office 2007

[Jim Wood]

Can someone here point me in the right direction to 'downgrade' from Office
2007 to an earlier version, Office 2003 for instance? Where can an earlier
version of Office be purchased "new" so that it can be registerd legally? I
purchased Office 2007 a number of months ago, but the 'improvements' in Word
are literally killing me. I need to get some work done.

 

[Bob I]

You will need to browse the web stores for a copy of Office 2003 that
isn't sold out yet. There is no "downgrade" version.

 

[Daddy]

There is no "downgrade" procedure for Office. You'll need to uninstall
Office 2007 and then install an earlier version of Office. (You'll have a
hard time finding earlier versions of Office. I suggest you look online.)

You would be well advised to convert files saved in the new XML formats to
Office 97-2003 format /before/ you uninstall Office 2007. This is especially
so for your Outlook data stores.

If you can't find an earlier version of Office, you can always try Corel
Office or the free OpenOffice, among other suites, but if you don't like
learning new ways to do things you won't like those either. And neither one
includes something comparable to Outlook.

All things considered, you're better off learning how to use Office 2007,
and there are plenty of good websites and books to help you along way. And
there's also this newsgroup.

Daddy

 

[Gordon]

There is no "downgrade" procedure for Office. You'll need to uninstall
Office 2007 and then install an earlier version of Office. (You'll have a
hard time finding earlier versions of Office. I suggest you look online.)

You would be well advised to convert files saved in the new XML formats to
Office 97-2003 format /before/ you uninstall Office 2007. This is
especially so for your Outlook data stores.

Not at all. The Compatibility pack can be downloaded and installed to allow
prior versions of Office to read Office 2007 documents, and if the OP gets
Office 2003, Outlook will read the Outlook 2007 pst file...

 

[Jim Wood]

Daddy:

Thanks for the advice. I don't use Outlook, I have saved my newer Word
documents in the legacy .doc format, and Publisher doesn't seem to have
changed much. Believe me, I have tried to work with Word 2007 but to me it
just is not nearly as 'professional' and intuitive as the earlier verions. I
see that other users have both '03 and '07 installed on the same system, so I
might try this and continue to struggle with '07 when I'm not against a
deadline.

 

[Daddy]

Hello, Gordon. Having read many of your posts, I am familiar with your
style.

I said the OP would be "well advised" because it would be much quicker to
convert the XML formats to Office 97-2003 format while s/he still has Office
2007, rather than installing more software to do it afterwards.

Daddy

 

[Kevin]

You can customize Office 2007 with this tool:

<http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/knowledge/deploy_office_enterprise.htm>

You have to stick with Office 2007 because office 2010 is also based on the same
look and feel. this is the way MS wants everybody to start using new
application packages.

With Addintool you can create Office 2003 Menu bar and "start doing some work".

hth

 

[Roger Fink]

You can buy a genuine, legit, installable copy of any MS Office suite on
ebay. But I'd be worried about problems with the new installation (i.e.,
the older version) due to problems that could occur from a partial or
corrupted uninstall of the the later version. There may be no problems at
all, or it could be a mess:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218

 

[Gordon]

Hello, Gordon. Having read many of your posts, I am familiar with your
style.

I said the OP would be "well advised" because it would be much quicker to
convert the XML formats to Office 97-2003 format while s/he still has
Office 2007, rather than installing more software to do it afterwards.

But if the OP installs the compatibility pack, he will be able to read any
2007 documents he gets sent after removing 2007. If he doesn't, he won't.
Why duplicate work?

 

[ckayakers]

Jim, I too am looking for a version of Office for "Grown Ups". I had to buy
the Home and Student vesion in a hurry after my Standard Office 2003 stopped
working following a couple of sys software updates. I've asked about
upgrading to the Regular or Pro versions hoping the user interface would be
different, but it looks like it is similar to the Home/Stu ver. I started
with visi-calc before the IBM PC hit the market, so I've made a lot of
changes, but these don't make much sense yet.