Uninstalling Office 2003 & Installing Office 2007

[Ms Q]

An XP Home Edition computer bought new 3 years ago came bundled w/Office 2003. Lately, Windows Installer has been inferfering with Excel, Word, and My Documents.* The computer in question is 2,000 miles away from me! (My daughter's computer) I have been trying to troubleshoot her problems with her over the phone. This is an incredibly tedious process that keeps leading us nowhere since she did not receive the Office installation CDs with the computer (and the solutions I find invariably involve using the CD). She is pressed for time -- must work with important files created in Office 2003 this weekend for a professional trade show starting on Monday.

I advised this workaround: Buy Office 2007 Standard Full Version at her local retailer tonight, do NOT buy the upgrade, uninstall Office 2003, and install Office 2007 Standard. Is this the advice Forum Experts here would also give her? Anything in particular that she should watch for if she does this? Will her data created in Office 2003 (including her Outlook msgs and contacts) remain even when she uninstalls Office 2003? (I've always thought so but I want to ask anyway.) What about the fact that Excel has a new file format and all these programs have changes in them? Are these changes in 2007 going to prevent her from making use of her 2003-version files right away w/o having to learn an entirely new way of doing things?

*The original problem has to do with the Windows Installer starting each time she clicks to open a file in My Documents. The Installer also starts when she clicks the Desktop icons to open Word and Excel but, after a delay, these programs DO open; however, the files inside of My Documents still do not open even when clicking File/Open from within these programs.

Time is of the essence before she buys a $399 Office 2007 product tonight. Any insights would be much appreciated.

[vinodh]

The installer starts, to indicate that required parts of office 2003 are missing. An installation source i.e cd or a copy on the hard drive would probably solve this. If it was me, I'd backup everything important (doc's, photos, etc), and perform a restore on the laptop. Hopefully, this would not only restore Windows; required drivers; utilities etc. but also Office 2003. It is possible that Office 2003 is included in the recovery disks.

If its not, then you can still copy back your backed up files and purchase Office 2007. Office 2007 won't pose any problems regarding file compatibility between previous versions. Also, you can make a setting change within Office 2007 to tell Office to always save your docs in the 97-2003 file formats:

Click on the large round Office button(the 1st button on the far left), the click on "word options" or whatever application you are using, click on "save", in the save documents area, choose 97-2003 docs and then click ok.

Finally, consider not rushing off and buying office, for at least a day or so, so that you can get someone to help your daughter fix the problem, and maybe save a quite a bit of cash, by not buying Office 2007.

Good Luck!