Office 2003 and 2010 coexistence

Question

Office 2003 and 2010 coexistence

Anonymous

Hello Everyone,

I have users who want to keep using Office 2003 no matter what but want to have Office 2010 installed in case they need it, manly for formating purposes and customers who send them huge models in the newer format. Of course they also absolutely need to open every file with office 2003. So at the moment I have 2003 files opening in 2003 and 2007/2010 files opening in 2010.

Is there a way to have every office files open in Office 2003 or I am just wasting my time here?

They are all on Windows 7 x64 and have 32 bits versions of office installed.

I have installed Office 2003 then the Fileformat converter then Office 2010 keeping all 2003 versions except for Outlook.

After that I did a repair of office 2003 and of the fileformat converter install.

I also added the following reg key:

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1

for word excel and powerpoint both 2003 and 2010 versions.

Bu that hasn't help me to have all office files open in 2003 version.

If anyone here has any idea of how to do that I really apreciate a push in the right direction.

Thanks,

Vincent

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

If you have theCompatibility patch (File Convertor) installed you should be able to open Office 2010 documents on Office 2003 and vice versa.

You can also try the steps below.

· Right click on the 2003 document.

· Open with -> Click Choose default program.

· Check the box – Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. Now click Browse.

· Browse to C:\Program files\Microsoft Office\Office 11\ select winword.exe.

· Click Open.

This will open the file with Word 2003; you can do the same with other office files (Excel - excel.exe ,PowerPoint – powerpnt.exe) to open with their respective Office 2003 applications.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

The registry key you mentioned will only affect Word 2003. It will not affect the other Word version(s) nor Excel.

You need to set the norereg option for the other Word version(s) and for Excel versions also. Powerpoint I don't use nor know much about.

You will then need to re-register Word and Excel 2003 to adopt the file associations and set the file associations for docx and xlsx to the Office 2003 products (I assume that you have the Office 2007 compatibility pack installed). There may still be compatibility issues e.g. for documents created from Word 2007/2010 templates which Word 2003 cannot handle.

The sooner you get these users working with Office 2010 the fewer support problems related to cross platform issues the better.

<vguyard> wrote in message news:*** Email address is removed for privacy ***...

Hello Everyone,

I have users who want to keep using Office 2003 no matter what but want to have Office 2010 installed in case they need it, manly for formating purposes and customers who send them huge models in the newer format. Of course they also absolutely need to open every file with office 2003. So at the moment I have 2003 files opening in 2003 and 2007/2010 files opening in 2010.

Is there a way to have every office files open in Office 2003 or I am just wasting my time here?

They are all on Windows 7 x64 and have 32 bits versions of office installed.

I have installed Office 2003 then the Fileformat converter then Office 2010 keeping all 2003 versions except for Outlook.

After that I did a repair of office 2003 and of the fileformat converter install.

I also added the following reg key:

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1

for word excel and powerpoint both 2003 and 2010 versions.

Bu that hasn't help me to have all office files open in 2003 version.

If anyone here has any idea of how to do that I really apreciate a push in the right direction.

Thanks,

Vincent

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

www.gmayor.com

Posted via the Communities Bridge

http://communitybridge.codeplex.com/

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2 additional answers

Answer 1

"The sooner you get these users working with Office 2010 the fewer support problems related to cross platform issues the better."

Please, the support problems are Microsoft-initiated. The philosophical change made in 2010/2007 may make it easier for secretaries to prepare frilly documents or improve sophisticated backend applications, but it otherwise hides important functionality of Word behind an irrational, inefficient, and illogical ribbon. Everything of importance takes more clicks or selections, screen availability is decreased, and the logic of command organization befuddles anyone trying to do real work. Any moderately sphisticated user could customize 2003 to automate or make one click the tasks commonly done, but no longer. I have used Word since DOS ver1.0 for DOS, and the pain of learning new versions (even the transition to Word for Windows) always had a big payoff ........ until 2007. I tried to adapt for three months but got increasingly frustrated with the additional clicks or keystrokes, lack of logic, and inabiltiy to customize. At least 2010 allows both systems to coexist. "Support problems" should include inefficiencies because useful tools in Word are impossible to access.

Answer 2

Thanks for your answer.

I have managed to do it for word, but only for word. If I try to change the file association for Excel the .xlsx files still open with Excel 2010 and same for .pptx files.

Althoug by the looks of it it should (it has the Excel and PowerPoint 2003 icon in the default program to use).

I'll keep at it for a while see if I can get this to work how they need it.

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Office 2003 and 2010 coexistence

2 additional answers