As an avid user of outlook 2003 and business contact manager associated with
the product for several years I was met with much dismay at the range of
problems I encountered upgrading to 2007 outlook and 2007 business contact
manager. I was more suprised that my long standing partnership with
Microsoft was not adapt at helping me solve my problem. None-the-less with
much effort I went forward with much expermintation on my own, finally
succeeding in the effort. My problem was not met with any efforts from the
news group either.
I went from failure in the process to upgrade to 2007 environment to full
re-installation of the 2003 environment. I found there that the auto-link
would no longer function. The history of clients is an important part of the
product. Seeking advise to make the 2003 environment and abandoning the 2007
work properly was not met by Microsoft nor the Newsgroup. I was at a
stalemate of abandonment of both products. Or, take of valuable time with
experimentation to make it work. Here are the steps I finally took to
correct the issues.
The 2007 product runnning on xp professional would only upgrade 1 e-mail
address. This was not good. All attempts to rectify the problem failed. I
made a decision to configure 2007 on a laptop running vista. I tried backing
up the xp outlook installations and was successful at backing up but was
unable to restore to the 2007 environment. Error was that I did not
administrative rights to make the backup, nor did I have administrative
rights to restore. This is not true. Keep in mind that this installation was
a single user install, not a shared environment.
To shorten this up some, and maybe help someone in the future with the same
problem. I installed the 2007 (both e-mail address with the .pst files from
the desktop xp environment) to a laptop vista envoronment. I created new
database files for each e-mail address. Since the backup restore did not
work, and the 2007 would not recognize the files from the previous database,
I tried exporting to a .bcm file. In doing so, I was successful in the
restoration side of importing the .bcm file to each e-mail addresses. I now
had a functioning 2007 outlook and 2007 bcm on a laptop. Next step was to
try and get the same type of installation to work on the desktop xp
environment.
While moving back to the 2003 environment, I had to remove the outlook 2007
from the 2007 suite. I now then had to re-instate the 2007 outlook. This was
a mission impossible. I finally completely remove the 2007 suite from the xp
environment. re-installed the 2007 suite. this step automatically migrated
the 2003 outlook/bcm environment to a 2007 outlook only for both e-mail
addresses. However the 2007 installation lacked the 2007 bcm installation.
I then installed the 2007 bcm. Upon opening of the 2007 outlook program, the
outlook 2007 recognized the database from an earlier installation, backed up
the info and transitioned the old data to the new environment. Complete with
auto-link fully functional. After 6 weeks of one of the biggest messes I
have encountered to date. I was back in business.
I cannot explain nor tell anyone the cause of the original problem. Only
that I had a very complex problem and no help to solve the issue. I use
Microsoft products faithfully. My livelyhood depends on recommending
Microsoft products. Would I have had these same issues were the desktop a
vista environment in the first place,I do not know? Is office 2007 a mature
product that will work in the xp environment, I think not. Am I comfortable
with the current situation of transitioning from xp/2003 to vista/2007 and/or
intermixing office 2003/2007. I remain very skeptical. None-the-less I
still plan to make my living doing what I have done for the last 15 years,
and that is consulting and recommending Microsoft products. The battle gets
more difficult each year. I was planning to move into the Microsoft 2007
account environment. This may have been the beginning of my original
problems to start with. I failed to mention that in the solutions process, I
un-installed the MSFT 2007 accounting product. (could this have been my
problem all along)????????????
I rest my case and must get back to making a living.
Jerryc
