Peebs-
I feel badly for any problems you are having if my suggestion set them up.
I appreciate that every office reference on the web, experienced users,
quality sites, MVPs, and books recommend always installing the older
version of Office and any of its apps *first* including the relatively user
friendly setup of MOS 2003 for coexisting versions of Office. This is
probably mentioned in a number of scatterd MSKBs, and I looked for an
explanation of *why* this is generally necessary but couldn't find one.
Maybe someone will offer this.
Since I haven't had the problem you described with several different Office
2003 and XP toolbar installations, I didn't think you would.
Also there is a valid caveat to make sure you don't install Office where
there is limited free space on the drive because Office setup requires a lot
of extra space to work with temporary files.
Your point as to why they just don't include the options for these old tools
that people are fond of or need very badly for their day to day work like
the Visual keyboard for you is very well taken. I wish they would make them
available, allowing Office to be more versatile for people rather than to
just eliminate features they have grown to use and need. There is an Office
feedback mechanism:
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HA010948391033&CTT=98
I know that I used a download of Office Sounds for Outlook that was labled
for previous versions of Office, 2000 and XP and it worked fine and, I asked
first if anyone was having problems and several people said it was working
fine. I wonder if you can download the Viasual keyboard and this would
work?
Office XP/2000 Add-in: Microsoft Visual Keyboard Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...BA-E9F6-41DB-86EB-2ADFE407E620&displaylang=en
Automatically Switch Keyboard Languages:
http://office.microsoft.com/assista...ual+keyboard&Scope=TC,HP,HA,RC,FX,ES,EP,DC,XT
Use Visual Keyboard to work with different keyboard layouts:
http://office.microsoft.com/assista...ual+keyboard&Scope=TC,HP,HA,RC,FX,ES,EP,DC,XT
Use a keyboard layout for a specific language
http://office.microsoft.com/assista...ual+keyboard&Scope=TC,HP,HA,RC,FX,ES,EP,DC,XT
Marc B.--
I understand and appreciate your method as a very useful alternative for
people to accomplish installing some of the older version tools. I also
wonder if during setup you could use one of the tools from the Resource kit
to preserve the tools from XP or a particular tool from an older version.
This would accomplish having any component of an older version installed
first if that impacts problems like Peebs.
There have been 2 or 3 other successful methods posted in this group
recently (in the last 2-4 weeks). I think it would be worthwhile for MSFT
to cull these methods (like yours) and perhaps post them on their site and
in an MSKB so that people could get use these older features problem free
with MOS 2003 or the next version. There seems to be a palpable ground
swell of requests to do this, and I'll do my best to make suggestions in
whatever venue I can find. There are mechanisms as you probably know within
MOS 2003 and on the site besides MS Wish to send suggestions.
Office Feedback Mechanism
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HA010948391033&CTT=98
Also it is obvious that you can set up a quick launch toolbar to simulate
the toolbar, or right click drag and drop a shortcut to the desktop or
folder for running Office applications, opening documents or displaying
programs. . You can double click the shortcut in Explorer, a folder
window, or the Windows desktop. You can drag shortcuts for Office programs
or documents to your start menu or any folder. Exceptions would be Office
tools like MSFT Graph and MSFT Equation, called OLEs (object linking and
embedding servers) that can be run only when an object is embeded in an
Office doc instead of as stand-alones.
Running Multiple Versions of Microsoft Office with Office 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;828956&Product=off2003
From the above KB 828956:
*Order of Installation*
"If you want to install and use more than one version of Office on the same
computer, you must install the earliest version first. For example, if you
want to use both Office 97 and Microsoft Office XP on the same computer,
install Office 97 first. You must follow this step because of the way that
registry keys, shared programs, file extensions, and other settings are
managed for each version of Office, and for the programs that are included
with each version of Office."
I know that for example, in Office 2000 keeping separate versions requires
that you specify a different location for program files, and I have seen a
lot of reflex posts on newsgroups to do this in Office 2003. But in fact,
Office 2003 does not require this. The Windows installer for MOS 2003 will
take care of this. I have read ( for example in Woody Leonhard's Que book
on Office) that there are some caveats and here are three he mentions
paraphrased:
1) Launching documents icons launches the MOS 2003 version of the program;
to open a document in Word 2K you have to open Word 2K first. 2) There
could be file format incompatibilities. 3) Because of VBA changes, object
models or capabilities, macros created in MOS 2003 may not work properly
when opened in other Office versions.
Chad Harris
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
