setting an older version of office as default

[veeten]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

My work recently gave me office 2008 to install on my home computer. However as I'm not the only one who uses this machine, I wanted to keep the older version of Office 2004 for the other users and to set Word and Powerpoint from the older version as the default applications for doc and ppt files.

The problem is that Office 2008 seems to have set itself as the default and anything I do to change the defaults back to the older version is ignored. e.g. if I use command I on a doc file, set it to open with Word 2004 and then choose change for all, it and other word documents will still automatically open in Word 2008.

I downloaded a Preference Pane app for setting default applications and in that Office 2008 is selected as default but with the options to uncheck it greyed out. I've tried repairing permissions but this hasn't worked either. The only thing I've found to work that sticks is changing the context menu with the alt key and selecting Always open with when opening a document. The problem is I have to basically do this with every single file I have.

Is there anything I can do?

 

[Michel Bintener]

There's not much you can do. Office 2008 is used automatically for any
Microsoft Office file format. What you could do as a workaround:

* keep the relevant Office 2004 application open. If Word 2004 is open, and
you double-click a Word document in the Finder, Word 2004 will automatically
be used. If Word is not open, Word 2008 will open instead.

* keep the icons for your favourite applications in the Dock, and open the
files by dragging them to the corresponding icon in the Dock.