Installing Office 2003 is a mess

[Lancelot]

I purchased Office 2003 on disk and I installed it on my old XP machine.

When I used the same disk to install Office 2003 on my new Vista machine, I
was taken by surprise when I was asked if I wanted Office 2007. I said yes,
thinking that it was a free update for Vista.

Now I have the following 3 problems, of which I have solved only the first
one:

1. When I open a Word file by double-clicking in Explorer, the file opens
under Office 2007 and asks if I want to install it, which I do not. I solved
this problem by first opening Word 2003 with the icon on the desktop and now
all my Word files open with this version and I don't get Office 2007
messages. Solved.

2. When I follow the same procedure with Excel 2003, the trick doesn't work
i.e. I can't open an Excel file under Office 2003 by double-clicking. The
file always opens under Office 2007 and asks me if I want to buy it.

3. The PowerPoint icon is not on my desktop and I can't find the Powerpoint
2003 version anywhere. The disk installed it on my XP machine, so why not on
my Vista machine?

I never had such installation problems with a software. Normally I buy the
software and I say yes to everything and everything I paid for is installed.
I must say that I am extremely irritated with the change to Vista, as I have
already lost many hours fooling around with taking ownership of my own
computer, changing properties all over the place, etc.

I could now try to uninstall all Office versions and hope that it works
better with a new installation. What do I have to look out for, so that I get
the same installation result as I got on my XP machine?

 

[Charlie Tame]

Well you could try Open Office which works well for me and millions of
others, it may get you by this bad spot if only temporarily.

http://www.openoffice.org/

It is completely free and may buy you time to sort out the other
problems, for which I don't know the answer.

You could check the file associations for XLS files to see if there is a
problem there.


Charlie Tame

 

[igotsaurus]

Uninstall all, reinstall what you want.
Office 2007 varies not at all from 2003 other than the ribbon of abomination
and automatic drop down boxes in word if you create complex form templates.
The slipshod laziness of Microsoft programmers, evident in all Microsoft
programs, persists in small details like Word 2007 allowing clicking to your
choice of default storage file whereas in Excel 2007 you have to enter that
manually.
Lest anyone think Win7 shows any less laziness see what happens when you
drill down a file tree in a Windows Explorer file tree.

 

[DL]

Your new Vista PC came with a Trial of Office, uninstall any/all Office
versions shown in Add/Remove, together with the Activation Assistant,
reboot, then install your paid for version

 

[Peter Foldes]

The reason being is that your new Vista contained the Office 2007 Trial.Uninstall
the Trial and the Activation Assistant and all of Office 2003 and then reboot and
then re-install your Office 2003

 

[Alias]

Hey idiot - He purchased Office. He doesn't need that INFERIOR Open
Sores Office. Get a brain.



So your response is to ignore the problem that he has and put an
INFERIOR Office Suite on his PC?
He needs to uninstall Office 2007 and Office 2003. Then reinstall
Office 2003.

He doesn't need that shitty OO that is about 10 years behind the times.

So, hot shot, what's your solution to the OP's problem or are you here
just to diss Open Source software?

 

[Memnoch]

You have reading comprehension problems. I did suggest a solution. It's in
the post. Try real hard and you will find it. If you have trouble let me
know and I'll point it out to you. LOL! I'll give you a hint:

I suspect the confusion arose because this was an actual, helpful reply to a
technical query. Somewhat unusual for this newgroup of late.