Multiple Versions of PowerPoint on One Machine

[Newelljo]

I make my living as a graphic designer. Many of my clients ask me to do PowerPoint presentations for them. As such, over the years I've kept multiple versions of PowerPoint so that I can use the exact version my client has. In recent years I've had Office 2002 and 2003 installed on the same machine without any problems whatsoever.

I am getting ready to buy Office 2007. Due to some Microsoft installation problems I was having on a new hard drive, I mentioned to the tech I was working with that I will be soon be installing Office 2007 on my computer. I will continue to need and use 2003 and sometime 2002. He told me it was impossible to have multiple versions of PPT (and perhaps Office as a whole) on one machine. I disagreed since I've run 2-3 versions of Office on one machine for years. Is this something new with Office 2007 or more specifically PPT'07? If so, this really limits my client base.

Regards,

Jodi-

[tain]

Doing that can cause problems in my experience. You should try using Virtual PC.

[Newelljo]

That news is so disheartening to hear. I have never had a problem with multiple versions on one machine.

I'll check out Virtual PC, thanks!

Jodi-

[gamehead200]

If you have a spare computer lying around, test it out on that for a few days (or use a virtual PC) and see if there are any issues. The only problem I see with this setup is that Office 2007 might overwrite a bunch of system-related files that aren't compatible with the older versions.

[Newelljo]

I just took a closer look at Virtual PC and see that it's for use with Win Vista. I am running Windows XP and don't plan to upgrade to Vista anytime soon. :-(

I don't have another PC to run a test on. A friend successfully installed the PPT 2007 trial on her Dell laptop PC while still using PPT 2003 without any problems. When I installed the trial version on my Dell desktop PC all of my Office 2003 apps ceased to run.

I was hoping (and had read something to back this up) that the actual full Office 2007 suite is supposed to play nicely with older versions of Office and it wasn't until the Microsoft tech mentioned that they could not run on the same computer that I became concerned.

Jodi-

[gamehead200]

I just took a closer look at Virtual PC and see that it's for use with Win Vista. I am running Windows XP and don't plan to upgrade to Vista anytime soon. :-(

VMWare does the same thing: http://www.vmware.com/

Should work for XP.

[Idontwantspam]

I just took a closer look at Virtual PC and see that it's for use with Win Vista. I am running Windows XP and don't plan to upgrade to Vista anytime soon. :-(

Where did you see that? I have XP running in Virtual PC, and Ubuntu running in VPC, too. You can install it on any computer running XP or Vista, maybe on 2000. Works fine with XP, though Ubuntu took some tweaking.

I, too, would like to be able to do this with ALL of office - word, powerpoint, excel, access, etc; version 2003 and 2007 on the same machine. I have yet to try this though. Too lazy to have gotten around to it.

[Newelljo]

Idontwantspam, thanks for your reply. You're right, now I see that it can be used on XP. The first page I started reading before appeared to be dedicated to Vista OS and a tiny bit of poking around didn't seem to change that impression so I figured it was a Vista-based tool.

I will read up on Virtual PC when I have a bit more time.

Jodi-

[Idontwantspam]

If you go with Virtual PC, check this out. Basically, MS provides free images of Windows XP Professional. It's supposed to be for web developers to test pages with IE 7 and IE 6, but it works great for this sort of poking around with things. the downside is the images expire, but if they didn't do that, then people would abuse this.

[gileswb]

I have MS Office '97, 2000, 2003, and 2007 all installed on my notebook without any problems.

I am running Win XP Pro(Media Edition) on a Gateway with an Athlon 64.

As you probably know. one of the options during installation is to leave the older version(s) on your system. It works fine for me.

Giles.