microsoft office

[royston]

In february I downloaded a free trial of Microsoft Office 2003.
This trial has now expired and I find that the software is too expensive to purchase at present.
I have a copy of Office 2000. If I loaded this would it affect the documents in the 2003 version or would they all work as normal ?.
Any help appreciated.
Roy
My system is Windows XP

[pompylen]

It will still open your 2003 in the same way as when sending a word document the recipient can open it regardless of their version, the only thing different is the amount of functions on each version. Hope I've understood you correctly and this helps.

[Neil Wilson]

In february I downloaded a free trial of Microsoft Office 2003.
This trial has now expired and I find that the software is too expensive to purchase at present.
I have a copy of Office 2000. If I loaded this would it affect the documents in the 2003 version or would they all work as normal ?.
Any help appreciated.
Roy
My system is Windows XP

Just made sure that you have un-installed the trial version before you load the 2000 version, in case there is an conflict with the system registry.
good luck
Neil

[Peter Goodey]

Will Office 2000 open Office 2003 files? I've never needed to try.

[Neil Wilson]

Will Office 2000 open Office 2003 files? I've never needed to try.

Good point - I have received some word processed documents done with a later version that I could not open with Office 2000. I have to use my laptop with the later version to open them.
One way round this is to download the software viewer available free from the Microsoft site http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/B...n&categoryid=9
Although they do not let you save documents, you can copy into you normal software program to edit and save.
I have the PowerPoint, Word 2003, Excel viewers
Neil

[Mythology]

"One way round this is to download the software viewer available free from the Microsoft site http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...en&categoryid=9"

Which is fine as long as you have XP.
I have ME, and, as I don't even have Word on my PC, let alone Office, downloaded the old versions of a number of these Microsoft free viewers ages ago.
Then a new version of Word came out (is it Word 10 maybe?) and I received a file that opened, but my viewer lost half an inch of it on the right hand side.
Guessing the reason, I went to download an updated version of the viewer.
It won't let me have the latest one, because it doesn't work with Windows ME.

Then followed a swift e-mail to the person who sent me the file on the lines of "if you want me to look at your FH stuff, don't send it in some MS only format!"

[Barbara Wilkinson]

Will Office 2000 open Office 2003 files? I've never needed to try.

You may have problems; you will almost certainly lose some formatting if the document has been laid out in any sort of intricate way.

The way to avoid this - if you still have access to your free trail of Office 2003 is to save your documents as a earlier version of Word (or whatever) - use the save as type box at the bottom of the save menu.

[Neil Wilson]

"One way round this is to download the software viewer available free from the Microsoft site http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...en&categoryid=9"

Which is fine as long as you have XP.
I have ME, and, as I don't even have Word on my PC, let alone Office, downloaded the old versions of a number of these Microsoft free viewers ages ago.
Then a new version of Word came out (is it Word 10 maybe?) and I received a file that opened, but my viewer lost half an inch of it on the right hand side.
Guessing the reason, I went to download an updated version of the viewer.
It won't let me have the latest one, because it doesn't work with Windows ME.

I have had a quick look to see if I could find a viewer for ME and noticed that they are going to stop supporting it in July this year.

So I will have PC with ME and laptop with XP, - would it be worth it to upgrade to XP on the PC?

[Mythology]

I think that really depends on the circumstances.

I'm in the fortunate position that it's usually other people wanting stuff from me, or wanting me to look at their stuff, so I can afford to be fairly "couldn't care less" about it - either they send me something that I can read or it doesn't get looked at, simple as that.

If you find that your having problems as a result of things that you want to use the PC for rather than the laptop not behaving in ME, it would be a different matter - probably worth upgrading to save the hassle of trying to find alternative solutions.

There are other considerations such as the security aspect - do you need the Windows updates? Personally, as someone who doesn't fall for dodgy e-mails, doesn't visit potentially dodgy websites, doesn't share the computer with anyone else and doesn't use Internet Explore as my browser etc., etc., I don't bother. They are more trouble than they are worth as far as I'm concerned - it was a blasted Windows Update that wrecked my Internet Explorer so that Windows now thinks I have version 3 instead of 5.5 SP2 and flatly refuses to let me repair it or upgrade to 6.
I am sure that there are a great number of people who would strongly disagree with my opinion though!

[MarkJ]

"One way round this is to download the software viewer available free from the Microsoft site http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...en&categoryid=9"

Which is fine as long as you have XP.
I have ME, and, as I don't even have Word on my PC, let alone Office, downloaded the old versions of a number of these Microsoft free viewers ages ago.
Then a new version of Word came out (is it Word 10 maybe?) and I received a file that opened, but my viewer lost half an inch of it on the right hand side.
Guessing the reason, I went to download an updated version of the viewer.
It won't let me have the latest one, because it doesn't work with Windows ME.

Then followed a swift e-mail to the person who sent me the file on the lines of "if you want me to look at your FH stuff, don't send it in some MS only format!"

Have you tried Open Office? Open source, free software which works well and will open Microsoft Office documents and save in that format if you so desire. In that sense it has an advantage over Microsoft Office - it opens all versions
It can sometimes give slight formatting issues with documents which have embedded pictures, otherwise its very good.
http://www.openoffice.org/ and look for the Windows download. Unless you need it, don't bother with the java enabled version - it runs more slowly Ignore the April Fools Day joke about Microsoft buying them out!

Biggest drawback compared to Microsoft Office? It is quite slow to open the first time.
It can co-exist with Microsofts Office programs happily if you already have those.
Large download - but worth a try out. I use it exclusively (admittedly, I do not use Windows) and my daughter uses it in Windows for all her school work without any problems.

Mark