Running 2 versions of Office

[NK]

We have worked with Office 2000 for the last number of years.
We purchased Office 2007 some months back. A this stage we did a customize
install of Office 2007 on machines and decided to keep all previous versions
of Office.

People mostly work with Office 2007 but I am wondering should I be patching
both Office 2000 and Office 2007 with updates or is it suffice to patch just
Office 2007?

 

[DL]

I believe you will find there are no Office2k updates being released
In any case MS Update will show any critical updates.

PS There was no need to do a custom install of 2007, unless by that you
simply mean to retain previous versions, as all versions after 2000 install
to version specific folders by default.
Its also the case that 2007 has the ability to save files in the old version
format

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

PS There was no need to do a custom install of 2007, unless by that you
simply mean to retain previous versions, as all versions after 2000 install
to version specific folders by default.

I've always assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the options set by default when
I do a custom install are the same as the options that'd be in effect if I did
a default install.

I mention that because one of the options that's aways set by default is to
remove previous versions of Office apps.

A custom install might indeed be necessary to retain earlier versions.

 

[Todd Mathison [MSFT]]

If any new critical Office 2000 patches are released, you should continue
patching Office 2000, just to be safe. Viruses often try to exploit old
security bugs, not just newly discovered issues.

Also, older versions of Office tend to contain more security risks than
newer versions of Office. Microsoft radically improved their process for
finding and fixing security bugs in 2001. Later service packs for Office
2000 should be significantly more secure than the original release version.