Two version of Office on same PC- problems

[Irshad Alam]

In my PC I have office2000/Access 2000 installed. I have 2 partition on my
hard disc C & D . I want to install only Access 2003 on my D drive. Following
queries are arising in my mind :

1. Will it be a problem while installation.
2. If it will be installed also in D drive, When I will try to open the mdb
from explorer, which version it will select automatically and will start.
3. If I want to start Access 2003, how to open that version.
4. Overall what can be a problem on Pc, on File etc.

Could any of the professional can advise me. what should I do. OR there will
no problem at all.

Regards.

Irshad

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Hi, Irshad,

Microsoft generally does not recommend running multiple versions of Office
applications on the same system. That said:

1) Do not let Access 2003 upgrade Access 2000, and then installation
shouldn't be a problem.
2) The mdb will open by default with whatever is most recently associated
with. In this case, it will be Access 2003, because that's the most recent
one installed.
3) Access uses an executable file called msaccess.exe. You should find two
of those on your system: one on the C: drive (probably somewhere in
c:\program files\microsoft office\...) for Access 2000, and one on the D:
drive for Access 2003. You can create a shortcut to each on your desktop or
toolbar or start menu, and that would be a clean way to know which is which.
4) The file formats for databases are different between Access 2003 and
Access 2000. If you are sharing mdbs between the versions, you may have
difficulty going back and forth. There is an Access 2000 file format
available in Access 2003, so you can save databases back to 2000.

 

[Beth Melton]

I have multiple versions of Office installed and I don't encounter
issues. There are a few but nothing major.

The main question I have is why you want both versions installed.

If you're worried about file formats then that isn't a problem in
Access 2003. Access 2003 can open an Access 2000 file format database
without the need to convert and those with Access 2000 can still
utilize the database as well.

If you are using both versions for development purposes then there are
some issues you could potentially encounter if you have both versions
installed.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

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