test drive Office 2004

[Renita Williams]

Is it possible to test drive Office 2004 with Office X already on my
computer? I don't want to mess up the operation of Office X.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Is it possible to test drive Office 2004 with Office X already on my
computer? I don't want to mess up the operation of Office X.

Yes. I parallelled 2004 and v.X for several months, and still have both
installed, though now I use v.X only for testing.

AFAIK, the primary thing to be aware of is that Entourage databases in
04 are different than v.X, and you can't go back. So if you test drive
Entourage, be sure to pick up your email with v.X as well.

 

[Renita Williams]

Thanks for the info. I don't use Entourage so I should be okay.

One technical question thought. When I download the 2004 test drive,
will it look for X and write over it, or will it automatically install
2004 in separate folders and leave X intact and unchanged?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

One technical question thought. When I download the 2004 test drive,
will it look for X and write over it, or will it automatically install
2004 in separate folders and leave X intact and unchanged?

It will leave v.X intact.

If you're nervous about your preferences, etc., one way to keep the two
suites separated is to create a new account in OS X and only run Office
2004 in the new account - that way 2004 preferences won't be installed
in your main account's ~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft folder. You can
use the Shared folder to access the same files in both versions.

Since I do a lot of testing, and need to keep installs clean, that's
what I do - v.X only runs in one of my test accounts. Takes about 10
seconds to switch.

 

[Renita Williams]

Thanks, I am going to give it a try.

It will leave v.X intact.

If you're nervous about your preferences, etc., one way to keep the two
suites separated is to create a new account in OS X and only run Office
2004 in the new account - that way 2004 preferences won't be installed
in your main account's ~:Libraryreferences:Microsoft folder. You can
use the Shared folder to access the same files in both versions.

Since I do a lot of testing, and need to keep installs clean, that's
what I do - v.X only runs in one of my test accounts. Takes about 10
seconds to switch.