Microsoft Support Question

[Rick]

Could one of you Microsoft guys (or anybody else who knows) tell me where I
can find a timeline of what's supported for given products? I could track
it down on the website.

The reason I ask is that we're a large organization that still has, for
example, users running Office 95 and Office 97 (yes really) and they call
us when they break.

They are reluctant to upgrade for various reasons (comfort, budget) and
lack of vendor support would be a good reason to force them to! Any
direction appreciated.

 

[Rick]

The name of this newsgroup is not clear... this newsgroup is
for discussion of the Microsoft Access database program, not
for any issues having to do with any other type of problems

For general Microsoft help, search here
http://search.microsoft.com/search.aspx?mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US

I didn't make it clear, but Access is what I'm asking about

 

[John W. Vinson]

Could one of you Microsoft guys (or anybody else who knows) tell me where I
can find a timeline of what's supported for given products? I could track
it down on the website.

We're not Microsoft guys. We're unpaid volunteers; I'm a self employed
consultant, lots of the other MVP's and regular contributors are in similar
positions, or answering questions on their own time while working for other
companies. Nobody from MS regularly posts or answers here.

The reason I ask is that we're a large organization that still has, for
example, users running Office 95 and Office 97 (yes really) and they call
us when they break.

A97 was the best version of Access ever released, FWIW.

They are reluctant to upgrade for various reasons (comfort, budget) and
lack of vendor support would be a good reason to force them to! Any
direction appreciated.

http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx?RDPATH=dm;en-us;lifecycle
should be a good start.

 

[BruceM]

This link lets you find out about the support life cycle for various
Microsoft products:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselect

 

[Rick]

We're not Microsoft guys. We're unpaid volunteers; I'm a self employed
consultant, lots of the other MVP's and regular contributors are in
similar positions, or answering questions on their own time while
working for other companies. Nobody from MS regularly posts or answers
here.

I understand that, but know that many others have more exposure to that
stuff than I do.

A97 was the best version of Access ever released, FWIW.

Your experience is drastically different than mine. In some ways
simpler, but I develop/patch with it half the time and dread that half
of my day. It's flaky, unstable, lacks some of the basic information
that should be builtin (i.e. what database is a linked table linked to?
If the link-table manager fails, as it often does, no way to tell
without writing code.) I back up my work about every two hours. I could
go on and on but I made the point. BTW, I have to uninstall and
reinstall it about once a month as it gets corrupt beyond repair. I
support about 5000 users and dread getting calls about AC97. On the
bright side, I dread the Access 95 calls even more!

us;
lifecycle should be a good start.

Thank you kindly!

 

[David W. Fenton]

Your experience is drastically different than mine.

Rick's experience corresponds to mine. I still have several
production apps in A97, and am doing active development in them. It
is still the most comfortable development environment for me (though
I've grown accustomed to the VBE, because I had to).

Perhaps you're not using best practices in your
development/deployment.

In some ways
simpler, but I develop/patch with it half the time and dread that
half of my day. It's flaky, unstable, lacks some of the basic
information that should be builtin (i.e. what database is a linked
table linked to? If the link-table manager fails, as it often
does, no way to tell without writing code.) I back up my work
about every two hours. I could go on and on but I made the point.
BTW, I have to uninstall and reinstall it about once a month as it
gets corrupt beyond repair. I support about 5000 users and dread
getting calls about AC97. On the bright side, I dread the Access
95 calls even more!

I think you must be using substandard development practices and
non-patched versions of A97.

Access 2003 is an excellent version of Access, but upgrading
directly from A97 has several pitfalls, because A2K3 resolves
references to controls completely differently in many different
contexts (within forms, as parameters in queries, to name two), so
you really have to test very carefully.

 

[Rick]

Rick's experience corresponds to mine. I still have several
production apps in A97, and am doing active development in them. It
is still the most comfortable development environment for me (though
I've grown accustomed to the VBE, because I had to).

Perhaps you're not using best practices in your
development/deployment.

There's nothing wrong with my development practices. I've been
developing in Access for five years and have learned through education
and trial by fire what to do and not to do. However, this is an
inherited application and one I and my department have no intention of
reqriting (certainly not in Access anyway).

I think you must be using substandard development practices and
non-patched versions of A97.

Again, not that I'm aware of. (I'm on old-time, bare-metal database
developer. I backup everything, maintain normalized databases, properly
indexed, and don't use most of the features Access provides as abhorent
pracitices such as lookups in tables, spaces in object names, and so on.
I regularly compile, compress and occasionaly rebuild with an empty
database and import. I could possibly look into creating a slipstream
patch integrated copy of it for when I have to reinstall it, because
like I said, this is a frequent requirement. MY hesitation on doing
that is a very shaky install base of about 80 users running some very
old equipment (P3's , Win2k, etc)

Access 2003 is an excellent version of Access, but upgrading
directly from A97 has several pitfalls, because A2K3 resolves
references to controls completely differently in many different
contexts (within forms, as parameters in queries, to name two), so
you really have to test very carefully.

One problem is upgrading directly to 2003. What I've discovered is that
I can often stage it to go from 97 to 2000, then 2000 to 2003. There can
still be issues by many are resolved doing that, I've found.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Your experience is drastically different than mine. In some ways
simpler, but I develop/patch with it half the time and dread that half
of my day. It's flaky, unstable, lacks some of the basic information
that should be builtin (i.e. what database is a linked table linked
to? If the link-table manager fails, as it often does, no way to tell
without writing code.)

It's available in the property sheet when looking at the link in design
view.

I back up my work about every two hours. I
could go on and on but I made the point. BTW, I have to uninstall and
reinstall it about once a month as it gets corrupt beyond repair. I
support about 5000 users and dread getting calls about AC97. On the
bright side, I dread the Access 95 calls even more!

I develop in 97 and convert a copy to 2000. I have users with 97 (full and
runtime), 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007. I have the most users in 97 and have
the fewest support issues with that group.

I wouldn't even take the call from an Access 95 user

 

[Fred]

I read a couple of places that, in 2007, the most heavily used version of
Office was Office 97.

Folks who are immersed in the "latest and greatest" and reading the
magazines and Microsoft materials often don't understand this.

 

[BruceM]

I would be interested in knowing where you read that. I tend to doubt
Office 97 is installed on more computers than a later version of Office.
There are some things I would rather they hadn't changed, and some things
they shouldn't have added (I regard click and type as an abomination in
Word, for instance), and some things that have become needlessly
complicated, but a lot has improved. On balance I would much rather work
with later versions of Office than the 97 version. This preference is based
on functionality, not on pursuit of the "latest and greatest".

 

[Rick]

I would be interested in knowing where you read that. I tend to doubt
Office 97 is installed on more computers than a later version of
Office. There are some things I would rather they hadn't changed, and
some things they shouldn't have added (I regard click and type as an
abomination in Word, for instance), and some things that have become
needlessly complicated, but a lot has improved. On balance I would
much rather work with later versions of Office than the 97 version.
This preference is based on functionality, not on pursuit of the
"latest and greatest".

I agree, Bruce. It could just be that, like our user base, people
running it are just not interested in upgrading because they see no
need, not because they did any comparision. Belive it or not, there are
STILL some computers out there running Windows 3.1, and as of a couple
years ago I knew of a company running DOS 6.2 because the DOS version of
the software package they depended on was much cheaper!

Though some things are unnecessarily complex and this like data access
pages should have been left out, I find 2003 to be more usable and
stable than any previous version.

 

[Rick]

It's available in the property sheet when looking at the link in design
view.

Exmabarrassed that I forgot about that! Thanks!