Win XP and Excel dilema.

[joelen]

Please help...

My wife's office uses Excel 97 on their PC's, and she needs me to instal Excel at home. I have just upgraded our home PC to Windows XP Pro, and am not sure which Office to install. I have Office 97, Office 2000, and Office XP all available. I want to make sure that she can go back and forth with her spreadsheets, so I am a little concerened about having her use XP Excel at home, and saving it to use in Excel 97 at work. But on the other hand, I am not sure if I can install Excel 97 on Windows XP (I would not install all of Office, just Excel 97).

What does eveyone think?

Has anyone been using Office 97 in Windows XP at all?

Has anyone been using Excel 97 and Excel XP and transfered spreadsheets back and forth between the two?

Thanks in advancve for your input...

Joe

[nytiger73]

Joe,

I don't think there is any support in WinXP for the Office 97 applications, I haven't tried it, even though I also have all 3 suites at my disposal. Anything created in Excel 97 will be able to be opened in a later version of Excel. However, anything created at home would be a question mark. The best way to get around that would be to save the spreadsheet as an earlier version. What I mean by this is, when you go to save the document, just choose an earlier version from the second drop down box and your wife should be able to open the file at work. Another alternative would be under options, like in Word, there should be an option to disable any features that are not supported in Excel 97.

Let me know if this helps.

[KINGofBLEH]

I don't think installing Office 97 on Win XP pro is an issue, especially since XP contains support for legacy applications. I also do not see any major issues with upgrading to Office 2000. In fact you wife may enjoy some of the enhanced capabilities in Office 2000. She should be able to view her Office 97 spreadsheets in 2000.

[Ya_know]

[quote]Originally posted by KINGofBLEH:
<strong>I don't think installing Office 97 on Win XP pro is an issue, especially since XP contains support for legacy applications. </strong><hr></blockquote>

There is a hand full of guys here that will disagree with that statement, as they are finding serious issues. I hope that some will post their knowledge, as I can't collaborate from personal experience. I just wanted to be sure no one makes the mistake of assuming there is backwards compatibility to Off97; because there is not.

[Ahcoraj]

I have office 97 running on XP, although I only use word and outlook. I havent had a single problem, but I admit i don't use them often. One thing that may seperate my experience from others is that i alway do a custom install of 97 and select all components. I also have O97 on XP working fine with our Oracle database, including mail merge. My best advice is to try it yourself after making backups of vital files, which you should do on a regular basis anyway.....My 2 cents......