Installing Outook 2003 over Exhange Server Based Client running Win2K Prof and Office 2000

[joe smith]

My company just issued me a new notebook running running Win2K Prof and
Office 2000 and is unwilling to let me have Office 2003 due to "cost and
support issues". I am willing to purchase Office 2003 Professional and
install it over Office 2000 running on Win2K. The mail store (.pst file) is
on the Exchange Server and the Notebook has a technology known as SMS, which
I take it is some sort of "Big Brother" software. To lessen the risk I will
clone the notebook hard drive and then to my experiment.

Are there any install impediments or issues associated w/doing this. Will
the corporate server still communicate w/my Outllok 2003? Is the "corporate"
Outlook 2003 includes w/Office 2003 Professional? Will the settings be
automatically migrated by the install?

 

[joe smith]

"Boy will you make them mad!"

Can you elaborate on this? They are not going to know I am doing this since
this this is a notebook, right? I have also preserved their original disk
drive, the physical drive, in pristine condition and if there were any
problems I could put it back in the notebook. Where is the risk?

"You will not be able to use Word as your email editor if you only upgrade
Outlook."

I am upgrading the entire office suite including word. I assume that takes
care of your second point?

 

[Jason]

"Boy will you make them mad!"

Can you elaborate on this? They are not going to know I am doing this since
this this is a notebook, right? I have also preserved their original disk
drive, the physical drive, in pristine condition and if there were any
problems I could put it back in the notebook. Where is the risk?

"You will not be able to use Word as your email editor if you only upgrade
Outlook."

I am upgrading the entire office suite including word. I assume that takes
care of your second point?

The SMS you referred to is among other things a software listing tool.
They can later go back and search for "Outlook 2003" and it will show
what machine names have it installed.

Yes if you upgrade the entire suite you are covered for the second point.
Be sure to save your documents in a pre 2003 way so that others can
read them.

 

[joe smith]

I use Office 2003 now at home and have never gotten a complaint from anyone
about the MS Word 2003 docs I have sent. I don't really do anything fancy.

 

[Brian Tillman]

My company just issued me a new notebook running running Win2K Prof
and Office 2000 and is unwilling to let me have Office 2003 due to
"cost and support issues".

What do you believe you'll gain with OL 2003 over 2000 that is essential to
your job? Also, there are legal, or at least corporate, issues involved
with you installing software on a company-owned asset. Where I work, this
can be grounds for dismissal.

Are there any install impediments or issues associated w/doing this.
Will the corporate server still communicate w/my Outllok 2003? Is the
"corporate" Outlook 2003 includes w/Office 2003 Professional? Will
the settings be automatically migrated by the install?

You can install OL 2003 over OL2000 and have it work just fine with an
Exchange 2000 server. Your OL 2000 settings will migrate. However, ask
yourself why you want to circumvent the goals of your company. Do you value
your job that little? Another consideration is that, legally, it has been
established in many courts that, if your company has an expressed policy
that email is a coprporate asset, then the messages you send and receive are
not your own; they belong to the corporation. If you were to install
Outlook 2003 and save any of the Exchange-based messages to a Unicode PST on
your notebook, removing it from the Exchange server, an argument can be made
that you've now stolen company property, since Outlook 2000 can't read a
Unicode PST.