Office 2000 vs. XP, for the corporate environment

[Professor Frink]

My office currently uses Office 2000, and I'm wondering if I should upgrade to XP. (money is not an issue).

My biggest concern is over any possible problems/conflicts. Will any of the changes between 2000 and XP cause any sort of problem with existing Office files?

We use all of the Office products, but are very dependent on Outlook. In varying degrees we use pretty much all of the Outlook features, including calendaring, meeting invitations, delegates, etc. Does anyone know of any Outlook feature that might not work the same?

FYI -- some other offices will still be on Office 2000. Maybe I'd be better off being on the same level as the others.......

[Justice]

You might gain some extra features for filtering and rules, and intergration of MSN messenger with Outlook 2002 (XP). Some of the features are only valuable if you are using Exchange 2000/2003. OfficeXP intoduce smart tags (Which are annoying to me), and some other things which I don't even know how to use (I'm not an avid office user, I only use word, excel, and outlook). Even though you say money is not a concern, I still don't think it's worth it. But that's just my opinon.

[Professor Frink]

Oh yeah, smart tags. I've experienced them, and they are really annoying. Just the sort of thing I don't want my users to see and complain about!

Although I suppose I could turn them off via the Office Installation Wizard.... right?

[ceez]

if it's not broken dont fix it man.

[XtremeMaC]

why not office 11?

[Justice]

why not office 11?

Depending on how computer-literate his clients are, Outlook 2003 can cause headaches because of the new layout of everything.

[Professor Frink]

When I said that money was not an object, that unfortunately stops at Office XP. (it's a licensing deal). We would have to buy Office 2003 licenses for every user, and that's not an option.

Maybe I'll roll out Office XP to a few users and see what happens. As long as nothing Outlook-related gets "broken"!!

[HyDeNCiTy]

#1 if it's not broken, don't fix it. because new products mean new headaches.

#2 if you r gonna upgrade, just go to 2k3. Personally? XP is ok, but 2k3 takes the cake, some people will dissagree, but I love the newness of the product and the flexibility. It has way more features and you can do a lot more. I don't know how much ur users need, but this is just a personal opinion.

[Jono]

@HyDeNCiTy

he said he can only upgrade to office XP, 2k3 is out of the question i would agree 2k3 is an amazing product but if you had bothered to read his reply you would have noted he cant go to 2k3 only xp.

@Professor Frink

i would upgrade as 2000 will be going out of the support phase soon i would imagine without checking so the product wont get updated any more, also there are some new security features in xp which you might find useful such as attachment blocking etc.

[R600]

I've installed certain apps from each version of Office - Word (XP), Excel (2k3) etc. etc.

If Outlook is of major importance, then I'd suggest Office XP over 2000 because for those who use Hotmail, they will find that they cannot add their hotmail account to Outlook 2000.

Also, about compatibility, you have the option to save a document as Rich Text Format.

[Justice]

... also there are some new security features in xp which you might find useful such as attachment blocking etc.

More like find annoying... but there is a 3rd party app that lets you change the blocked extensions easily.