Sat, Jan 28 2006 12:56 AM Erwyn van der Meer

Office "12" on my machine

Better late than never, but today the DVD with Beta 1 of Office "12" that was promised at PDC05 arrived.

I decided not to go with the default "upgrade" option, because that removes all Office 2003 components. Installing side-by-side went pretty smooth. The installation stalls at about 90% in the progress bar, so it has the usual Microsoft  Progress Bar Syndrome. That's okay because I am used to it ;)

The only strange thing was that Outlook was selected to be installed at the top level in the list of install options. But it wasn't present after installation. I reran setup and manually selected the main Outlook "12" components. After that the version 12 binaries were present. But this new Outlook version quits on startup after complaining that MAPI cannot load mspst.dll. I guess Outlook doesn't support running side-by-side with an older version. Too bad, I like living on the edge, but handing over my PSTs to a beta 1 version is a bit over the edge for me.

Since the PDC I have been reading the blog of Jensen Harris. He tells a lot about the history of Office and where the product suite is going. It's amazing how much usability work has gone into Office "12" and how refreshing the new UI is. I am hooked already!
Filed under: ,

# re: Office "12" on my machine

Saturday, January 28, 2006 1:07 PM by Dennis van der Stelt

I installed it on my laptop from work. Problem is, every Office document loads by default in the new Office 12. That's great of course, but not of older Office versions (I tested with 2003) cannot read everything anymore, once it's saved in Office 12.

Word en PowerPoint documents screwed up.

So be warned :)

I did get Outlook 12 by the way, but unfortunatly it does not have the new ribbon :) Jensen Harris has a recent blogpost though, about Outlook being the most complicated piece of Office 12, when desiging the ribbon. :)

# re: Office "12" on my machine

Saturday, January 28, 2006 1:08 PM by Dennis van der Stelt

Oh, by the way, because of the screwing up of documents, I uninstalled Office 12 already. The ribbon is nice, but not that much has been changed. Some new PowerPoint graphical options, but still the same old boring objects, just with some new colors and bevel and emboss stuff ;)

# re: Office "12" on my machine

Monday, January 30, 2006 3:31 AM by Erwyn van der Meer

Dennis, I had no trouble opening a document I authored in Word "12" in Word 2003. Be sure to save the Word "12" document as .doc and not in the new default zipped XML format .docx. In the future Microsoft will provide free updates for Word 2000, XP and 2003 that will allow those versions to open .docx files. Even better the old versions can even save in the new format when they are updated. See http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/10/11/479808.aspx.

# Microsoft Office Diagnostics

Monday, January 30, 2006 1:12 PM by Erwyn van der Meer

Problems with Outlook "12" caused the Microsoft Office Diagnostics utility to show up.

# re: Office "12" on my machine

Wednesday, February 01, 2006 12:05 AM by Dennis van der Stelt

Erwyn, I didn't have problems with all documents. But one document I had worked on some time, was totally screwed up. Luckely I had just copied it from another computer and needed to add only the newly written text.

Mainly PowerPoint had some serious defects. Also the thumbnail view of all slides on the left didn't behave like it should. And the slidedecks themselves also got screwed up severely.

# re: Office "12" on my machine

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 10:51 AM by Max Quiroz

Hi, Just got my copy. Installed it side by side and everything works ok, except for powerpoint. Whenever I try to open an older version file, it says that it cannot read the file. Any help or suggestions.

Thanks!

# re: Office "12" on my machine

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 3:52 PM by Erwyn van der Meer

Max, I am sorry but I cannot repro the issue you mentioned. Older PowerPoint files open just fine in both PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint "12" on my machine.