Installing Office XP Pro with and existing copy of Office XP Small Business

[Gregg M]

I currently have Office XP Small Business 2002 installed
on my desktop computer. I would like to install Office XP
Pro, since I need MS Access. I have previously installed
Office XP Pro on a notebook and understand that I can
also install 1 copy on my Desktop.

When installing Office XP Pro, should I first remove
Office XP Small Business Edition? All that I really need
is MS Access added. Also, I currently have a lot of
contacts setup in my addressbook in MS Outlook. What would
happen to the data in Outlook if I un-installed Office
Small Busines? I know that I could copy the Outlook.pst
file to another location so that it doesn't get
overwritten.

In the past on older PCs when I installed the Pro version
of office over Small Business, I found that I could't
apply service packs because of the mixed versions. So I am
assuming that it would be best to remove XP Small Business
edition, then install Office XP Pro.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Hi, Gregg,

It shouldn't matter, but I think I would uninstall Office XP SBE first. You
are correct that the Windows Installer may be less likely to get confused
when it processes updates and patches for Office, because it usually asks
you to insert the installation CD, and you'd need to figure out which one to
use. It's likely to be cleaner.

The removal shouldn't affect your data files, including your Outlook PST
file, which stores your Outlook data. However, to be safe, it's not a bad
idea to back it up. Search your hard drive for any files with the .pst
extension and back them up.