Rollback

[Peter F]

Hi All,

Please could someone answer me a question regarding rollback.

We are about to upgrade our systems from NT4 to Server 2003, XP machines and
from a previous version of Office to Office 2003. This is planned to be run
in parrallel until the new system beds in and and has sorted out it's
teething problems.

The question is when we upgrade and save our office files in the "Newer
Version" will we also be able to use them in the old system.

Any information regarding this would be very much appreciated.

Kind Regards.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi All,

Please could someone answer me a question regarding rollback.

We are about to upgrade our systems from NT4 to Server 2003, XP machines and
from a previous version of Office to Office 2003. This is planned to be run
in parrallel until the new system beds in and and has sorted out it's
teething problems.

The question is when we upgrade and save our office files in the "Newer
Version" will we also be able to use them in the old system.

Generally speaking, if your "older version" is Word 97 or above, you may
open files saved with Word 2003 in your older version and vice versa.
New features not available in your older version will not show up
(understandably).

So, for the typical Office file (presentations, XLS files, small to
medium sized letter etc. documents), you should be fine.

The problems start when you are using OLE objects (say, Insert | Object
to bring a clickable/editable presentation or worksheet into Word or
vice versa). I have made rather mixed experiences with moving from NT4
to Windows 2000 and upgrading Office 97 to 2000, IIRC. Sometimes, it was
necessary to embedd the object again in the new version.

With complex documents (long books, and/or lots of
objects/pictures/equations), I would advise against saving them
alternatively in earlier versions and back again. Updating the
corresponding templates (now is as good a time as ever) on the new
version and offering both versions of the templates to your users
depending on the Office version of their machine might be best. But
don't save back and forth complex documents. You want to have very clear
operating procedures (who can make changes on what machine(s), etc.) for
those -- they're hard enough as it is ...

2cents
Robert