PS 2007's compatibility with Office 2003

[Shane]

When we upgraded from PS 2002 to 2003, we found that in order to use some of
the PWA capabilities (i.e. export to Excel, document control, etc.) it was
necessary to upgrade to Office 2003.
We are now contemplating an upgrade to PS 2007 and MS Project 2007. Are we
going to find a similar issue in the compatibility with Office 2003? Will it
be necessary for us to upgrade to Office 2007, or will we be able to keep
Office 2003 and use all of PS 2007's capabilities?

Thx,
Shane

 

[Scott m Wagner - EPM Consulting Services]

Shane,

For the most part you will get many benefits from moving to the EPM solution
07. I believe the outlook connector may be one area where you need 2007 but I
am not sure (Can anyone else on the support site confirm or deny this
please). You can use all the current benefits of office 03 other than that I
believe. I am running both office 03 and 07 and I use the interchangeable
with no issue so if you want to test it should not be difficult.

Hope that helps.

 

[Marc Soester]

Hi Shane,

You dont need to upgrade your office 2003, appart from MS Project ( that
needs to have the 07 version).
Project Server 2007 still used the office web component 2003, meaning that
office 2003 will do the job. Outlook 2003 will also be sufficient and will
work just fine.

So from my understanding, in a nutshell, yes it is nice to upgrade to 07 (
new look and feel and great new functionality), but you dont need to in
regards to additional functionality for Project Server. all you need is MS
Project 2007
Hope this helps

 

[Marc Schoeni]

Shane,

As far as PS2007 is concerned, I don't think you need to update your Office
2003 deployment to 2007 just yet. User will still be able to export grids to
Excel etc.

However, WSSv3 (or even MOSS 2007) offers some great new features for taking
SharePoint lists and content offline with Outlook 2007. This feature is not
available with Outlook 2003. So depending on your company's usage of project
workspaces/WSS, also take this into consideration for whether to update to
Office 2007 or not.

Hope this helps...

 

[Shane]

That's what I needed to know. Thx.

Hi Shane,

You dont need to upgrade your office 2003, appart from MS Project ( that
needs to have the 07 version).
Project Server 2007 still used the office web component 2003, meaning that
office 2003 will do the job. Outlook 2003 will also be sufficient and will
work just fine.

So from my understanding, in a nutshell, yes it is nice to upgrade to 07 (
new look and feel and great new functionality), but you dont need to in
regards to additional functionality for Project Server. all you need is MS
Project 2007
Hope this helps

 

[Shane]

This lets me know what to do, Thx.

Shane,

As far as PS2007 is concerned, I don't think you need to update your Office
2003 deployment to 2007 just yet. User will still be able to export grids to
Excel etc.

However, WSSv3 (or even MOSS 2007) offers some great new features for taking
SharePoint lists and content offline with Outlook 2007. This feature is not
available with Outlook 2003. So depending on your company's usage of project
workspaces/WSS, also take this into consideration for whether to update to
Office 2007 or not.

Hope this helps...

--
Marc
MCP for EPM
www.diventis.ch
www.msepm.blogspot.com

 

[Shane]

Thanks, you answered my question perfectly.

Shane,

For the most part you will get many benefits from moving to the EPM solution
07. I believe the outlook connector may be one area where you need 2007 but I
am not sure (Can anyone else on the support site confirm or deny this
please). You can use all the current benefits of office 03 other than that I
believe. I am running both office 03 and 07 and I use the interchangeable
with no issue so if you want to test it should not be difficult.

Hope that helps.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Shane:

I'm going to sound a sour note here. Using Office 2003 with WSS and MOSS
2007 versions is flaky. For the most part they work, but there are hiccups
and issues. One that I've found particularly annoying is corruption in the
Office Web Components.

--


Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
For Project Server Books: http://www.projectserverbooks.com
For Project Server Training: http://www.projectservertraining.com
For Project FAQS: http://www.mvps.org/project