Excel 2003 and Office 2007 Compatibility

[Bob]

I am trying to use a vendors excel program for pricing, and I get all sorts
of screen sizing issues...his response below....surely there is better
compatibilty between these relaeases...can any one suggest options...

You are running the program in Microsoft Office 2007. the program is
designed to run in Microsoft Office 2003 as more than 99% of businesses
operate with XP & office 2003 operating systems. Office 2007 is designed for
Windows Vista and is full of programming bugs such as the one you have here.
Most specialist computer technicians still supply computers with Windows XP
operating system and source office 2003.

If you install it on a computer running with XP & office 2003 you will have
no problems

 

[JLatham]

Bob,
I can only say that if you can't get the vendor to update his product to
function properly in 2007 you may have to learn to live with the issue or
find a machine with 2003 on it to use it on. A poor choice.

On the other hand, I've been approached by some companies using an Excel
package I developed for (now) AT&T back around 1999 in Excel 97. It had
worked fine up through Office XP and 2003, but failed in 2007. I found where
Excel 2007 failed to adhere to earlier standards in the failure area, and
modified that application so that now it works properly in all versions of
Excel from 97 through 2007. Seems your vendor needs to be looking at fixing
it. I realize that 2007 has some problems (lord knows I've complained about
some myself), but the reality is that 2000 and 2003 will one day be
unsupported products, and at some point new copies won't be available, and
their application is going to have to work under later versions of Excel than
2003, be it 2007, 2010, or 2020 or whatever.

As for the vendor's claim of "99%", that may be true in private industry -
and I have my doubts about 99%, probably still better than 85% (gut guess),
but more are moving to 2007 as they buy new systems. And the Government has
already moved to Office 2007, which puts a very large number of systems on
Office 97 - a very large number.