Upgrading from Office 2003 Pro to Office 2007 Pro

[John K]

I know there are many aspects to consider when you are upgrading many users
from 2003 to 2007. What I'm concerned with the most right now is figuring out
which applications will break after performing the MS Office upgrade to 2007.

I have a lot of applications out on the desktops / laptops to consider and
will have to test them all.

Does anyone know of any documented list of known third party applications
that break or are impacted when an MS Office 2003 to 2007 upgrade is
performed ?

We use full versions of Adobe Acrobat and I was told this app or certain
versions of it will break after upgrading. it seems many third party apps
with hooks into Office will break during an upgrade.

It would be nice to know if someone out there already has a list of known
apps and potentional remedies they have discovered.

Thanks,
John K

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I know there are many aspects to consider when you are upgrading many users
from 2003 to 2007. What I'm concerned with the most right now is figuring out
which applications will break after performing the MS Office upgrade to 2007.

I have a lot of applications out on the desktops / laptops to consider and
will have to test them all.

Does anyone know of any documented list of known third party applications
that break or are impacted when an MS Office 2003 to 2007 upgrade is
performed ?

We use full versions of Adobe Acrobat and I was told this app or certain
versions of it will break after upgrading. it seems many third party apps
with hooks into Office will break during an upgrade.

It would be nice to know if someone out there already has a list of known
apps and potentional remedies they have discovered.

You might get more useful feedback if you list the apps/add-ins you rely on.

Even if no-one has a complete list of apps that work/don't work they may have
experience with specific apps that you list.

 

[John K]

Good Point Steve. Thanks for that advice.

The critical applications I have are:

Oracle's Sealed Media version 5.5.9.5 (we know this one breaks and we have
the fix for this one)

Adobe Acrobat versions 6,7, and 8

SAP - SAPGUI version 7.1.0

Hyperion Planning version 7.X

Citrix 4.5 Presentation Server

Business Objects XI 3.1


We have found on Oracle's Sealed media product, that if the application's
MSI file is installed locally, (on the client) we can script and "MSIEXEC
/fa" with the app's MSI file to fix this application after our MS Office 2007
Pro upgrade SMS package is run on the client.

Hopefully we can find similar solutions to fix the others. ( I hope I'm on
the right trail ...)


Regards,
John



We a

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Adobe Acrobat versions 6,7, and 8

It's fairly unlikely that the earlier versions of Acrobat will work with Office
2007. 8 might, 9 is a better bet.

This would apply to the add-ins that Acrobat installs. If you're just printing to
the Adobe PDF driver, that should work ok (and you can opt not to install the Office
add-ins).

Of course, with Office 2007 you get a very fast, good-quality PDF export tool for
free (as an add-in with the original version, or automatically with SP2). You may
not even need Acrobat any longer.

 

[DeanH]

Steve: yes 2007 does have the PDF export tool, but the users may still
require the other multiude of functions that Acrobat has other than just
producing PDF files ;-)
John: from what I have been hearing Steve is correct that Acrobat 6 and
prior have problems with Office 2007, v7 seems to be better but 8 and 9 are
OK (cross-fingers)
All the best
DeanH

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Steve: yes 2007 does have the PDF export tool, but the users may still
require the other multiude of functions that Acrobat has other than just
producing PDF files ;-)

The pony does have a few other tricks up its ... er ... mane.

Any fairly recent version of Acrobat should be able to do its magic on PDFs though,
regardless of how the PDFs were created. IOW, if you have an older version of Acrobat,
you could forego the Acrobat Office add-ins if they're not compatible, print to the Adobe
PDF driver or use Office's own PDF save feature, then do any needed mods in Acrobat.

You'd lose the add-ins' ability to crete clickable indices in Word, preserve at least
some hyperlinks in PPT and so on.