David Overton's Blog

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• Office 2003 running on Windows Server 2008

  I saw that someone searched against this and hit my blog, so I decided to quickly add a note on this. Office 2003 does run on Windows Server 2008, but there is a problem with the Rights Management System client. The Knowledge Base support article Release notes for the preliminary release of Windows Server 2008 has the following to say: Office 2003 is unable to detect the Windows Server 2008 Rights Management System (RMS) Client when you try to use the Windows Server 2008 RMS to protect Microsoft Office 2003... Posted Mar 17 2008, 01:23 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Application Compatibility, Office 2003, Windows Server 2008

• How to make Office 2007 always save in Office 97-2003 format

  This is another area I get a lot of questions, so I thought I would share the answer. While my person preference is to tell people to load the tools onto Office 2000/XP/2003 machines as documented at How to open Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007) files on Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 by downloading the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for File Formats - David Overton's Blog for some people this is not an option. So, how do you force Office to save in the older format? If you want... Posted Nov 28 2007, 09:23 PM by David Overton with | with no comments Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Office 2007, Application Compatibility

• Finding out where something is in Office 2007 and where it was in Office 2003 (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access)

  I saw this recently and thought I had to blog it - if you know something was there in Office 2003 and now can't find it in Office 2007 then look at these spreadsheets to get some advice. The 1st set of links (ms-help:) will work on a machine with Office 2007 installed and the 2nd set pull the data from the Microsoft Office web site. From the installed help files Outlook ms-help://MS.RIBBON.12.1033/RIBBON/outlookmap.xls Word ms-help://MS.RIBBON.12.1033/RIBBON/wordmap.xls Excel ms-help://MS.RIBBON.12.1033... Posted Sep 08 2007, 08:43 PM by David Overton with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Office 2007, Documentation, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Application Compatibility, Office 2003

• Application news for developers - x64 support, application people ready assessments, Vista Gadget security inspection and SharePoint development

  While I am on holiday I thought I would forward these items for the developers out there. The http://blogs.iis.net blog looks awesome for IIS7 information, including videos and the other MSDN information demonstrates how to develop SharePoint tools. Application support Is Your Application Platform People-Ready? Complete the Self-Assessment and Find Out Take the Application Platform Infrastructure Optimisation assessment to measure the effectiveness of your current infrastructure in platform-agnostic terms, and... Posted Aug 21 2007, 12:34 AM by David Overton with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Windows SharePoint Services, Developer, Event, Windows Client, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Training, Application Compatibility, SharePoint, IIS

• They're coming - the list of fixes in those new Vista fix packs - soon going out to beta and then to the rest of the world

  [updated to correct grammar in title - thanks to Warren Jacobi for pointing it out to me] I have been hearing about these at work - I don't have them yet, so can't comment on them, but apparently they will be going to trial soon and then out via updates. 938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support... Posted Aug 06 2007, 11:28 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Support and Tools, beta, Windows Client, Windows Vista, System Update, Application Compatibility

• Show Classic Menus and Toolbars on Ribbon of Office 2007 - two product choices

  I saw a blog entry at Susan Bradley's blog about her now deploying Office 2007 with a classic menu . It was worth of a blog link for all those who want to stick to the old, old ways where you search for items over multiple menus (especially if you turn on personalised menus which hide all the things you don't use regularly). The tool looks slick, but then I found a 2nd one are realised that some cunning ISVs had seen this as their great opportunity to fill a gap that is very unlikely to be filled by... Posted Jul 23 2007, 11:35 AM by David Overton with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Microsoft, Office 2007, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Application Compatibility, Office 2003

• How to get the Office Assistant (Office 2003) to work in Windows Vista, i.e. remove the "Not enough memory" error messages

  [updated 31st July for x64 systems] I have been asked this question several times and finally dug into the system to make it work. The solution The Office Assistant relies on some "agent" technologies. To fix this we need to install the agent technologies and then copy a DLL across. Since I was playing around it is possible that there is an extra step or two that is not actually needed, but since this is a small process and simple to do I don't think it will do any harm. What is more, I was not... Posted Jul 23 2007, 12:02 AM by David Overton with | with 124 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Windows Client, Windows Vista, Tips, Application Compatibility, Office 2003

• How to get rid of the installer / configuration dialog when running Office 2007 and Office 2003 on the same system - for Vista and other versions of Windows

  I have been asked this many times following up on the blog entry Installing Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same system where once people have removed the problem with the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) appearing every time they start Office they then get the dialogs below every time they switch between Word 2007 and Word 2003. when starting Word 2003 when starting Word 2007 The fix to the problem is very simple as it turns out - simply run the following commands (by pressing the Windows Key+R or typing... Posted Jul 21 2007, 04:47 AM by David Overton with | with 151 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Office System, Support and Tools, Windows Client, Vista, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Documentation, Word, Tips, Application Compatibility, Office 2003

• Spreadsheets and documents based on standards - OpenXML and ODF, ODF and Excel or all 3

  I have been using and referencing standards for a long time. They are great. C# is an ECMA standard for example as are parts of .Net which is how project Mono has managed to come great strides in delivering part of the .Net experience on non-Microsoft platforms. Also my 1st job out after University was writing document converters. So there are two things here - one, what is wrong with more than 1 standard - we have several for networks, several for character sets. Often one standard will work where another will... Posted Jun 29 2007, 03:21 PM by David Overton with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Office 2007, Application Compatibility, Open XML, Open Standards, If you only read one post today

• Alistair likes Vista and found out that the Dell SATA drivers were making is go slow

  I was browsing the UKSBSG Yahoo Group (a group for UK Small Business Partners) when I noticed Alistair 's post in response to slow Vista systems and I thought I had to share: Hi, Just from experience, I had similar issues on Outlook 2007 and, to a lesser extent, Vista in general - especially on boot, which would take an age. I am using a Dell Dimension 9100, 2GB ram and SATA drives. One would think it would be pretty good, but behaved like a dog. The Microsoft fix made some little difference. What made a... Posted Jun 28 2007, 04:43 PM by David Overton with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Support and Tools, Windows Client, Vista, Windows Vista, Application Compatibility

• You can't use Outlook Web Access because you can't send or reply to mails. You've seen a server update will fix it, but you can't get the server updated - here is the simplest way to work

  I have to thanks Lauren for bringing this to my attention. She had found my posting on how to update Exchange so that this did not happen, but she could not get the SBS / Exchange Server updated. Her research said that using Firefox would fix the problem , but to me this was just a huge sledgehammer to crack a nut, so I guessed there must be a much easier solution and there is. Use "basic" or "light" mode. This may sound complex, but it is about as easy as it gets. Here is the Exchange 2003... Posted Jun 18 2007, 09:45 AM by David Overton with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: SBS 2003, Internet Explorer, Exchange, SBS 2003 R2, Application Compatibility, OWA, Outlook Web Access

• Responding to another "I can't load Office 2003 on Vista" e-mail

  [updated to correct a typo - 10:48 27th May 2007] I get lots of mails similar to the one below as a result of the blog entries on the EULA not going away and the Office 2003 on Vista and in some cases the issues have been Vista, sometimes the CD and sometimes non-genuine software that someone has been sold (as a side note - it has never been the new security - UAC that has been at the root of the problem). Hi David, I have read your blog entry re: 2003 installation on Vista but I have a problem not previously... Posted May 27 2007, 07:21 PM by David Overton with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Windows Client, Vista, Windows Vista, Application Compatibility, Office 2003

• Windows Vista AppReadiness- Find out if your application is known and / or supported or expected to run on Vista

  I saw this was released and thought I had to share it - finally a resource will logo'd ready and community opinion on application compatibility for Vista. It states: Welcome to the Windows Vista Application Readiness Beta site! The central place to find and share information about software that runs on the Windows Vista platform. Browse through a comprehensive listing of applications that have a Windows Vista Logo or are Ready for Windows Vista, See comments on compatibility that the community has contributed... Posted May 11 2007, 09:39 PM by David Overton with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Windows Vista and XP, Support and Tools, Community, Windows Client, Vista, Windows Vista, Documentation, Partner, Application Compatibility

• Installing Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same system

  [updated 16:42 9th May 2007 with url for MS Support of this] [updated 9:45 22nd July 2007 with url to fix for install dialog coming up with word] I was recently asked in Office 2003 and Office 2007 can co-exist on the same system. The answer is yes, except for Outlook which as in previous versions get a little precious if this is attempted (it will not let you do this, btw). You can choose to have them both installed to the same drive or one to an external hard drive, it does not matter. The key option is when... Posted May 09 2007, 02:40 PM by David Overton with | with 83 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Support and Tools, Office 2007, Word, Tips, Application Compatibility, Office 2003

• Buying Vista and then installing an old version of Office - what are you allowed to do

  I have already discussed on this blog what is and is not support for Office on Vista (any version from 2000 on) here . However there is always the question of licensing what is actually allowed and what would be piracy. I am going to try to make it very simple here. · If you have the Home and Student (was the Student and Teacher) Edition then this can be installed on 3 computers in the same household · If you have a previous “Full Packaged Product” – the pretty box you bought at a retailers – version of the... Posted May 09 2007, 02:40 PM by David Overton with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Office System, Business, Vista, Licensing, Application Compatibility, Office 2003