Installing Office 2007 after 2013 (1 Viewer)

[ions]

Hello,

I purchased a new machine. I didn't realize Office 2013 trial was installed as there was no indication that it was in <All Programs> etc...

I installed Office 2007 and spent many hours setting up my new development environment only to realize an Office 2013 trial was installed when I was selecting Office references in the VBA IDE.

I uninstalled the Office 2013 trial but it has been recommended that I at least uninstall and re-install Office 2007 and clean the Registry. To be completely safe, I have been advised to reformat and start from scratch.

Before I commit to uninstalling or reformatting and starting from scratch I wanted to get this community's opinion if I can continue developing in my current environment and if not should I bite the bullet and reformat.

Thanks

 

[Galaxiom]

To be completely safe, I have been advised to reformat and start from scratch.

Who advised that? It is rubbish.

 

[ions]

Two Access MVPs advised this.

Both suggested I at least uninstall and re-install Office 2007 after un-installing the Office 2013 trial. One of the MVP's said to be completely safe I should consider reformatting.

Please note I am creating MDE and ACCDE files and distributing them into unknown environments so it's critical I avoid any installation problems.

The reason I put forth this question despite being advised by two Access MVPs is because considerable hours will be lost especially if I reformat so I wanted to get a third opinion before committing to such a time consuming process.

 

[GinaWhipp]

Which ones? Cause that is just crazy... I would recommend a repair of your Office 2007 installation but that's it.

 

[ions]

Hi Gina,

I will not mention their names as I don't think that is fair to them. They made these recommendations in private over email.

Interesting. So Gina in your opinion only a repair is necessary.

I actually installed Access 2003 on the machine before Office 2007 as well. So this is the current state of affairs.

1) Office 2013 trial was installed without my knowledge on the new machine

2) I installed Access 2003 + Excel 2003.
3) I then installed Office 2007 Ultimate with the entire suite selected.

4) I uninstalled the Office 2013 trial.

 

[GinaWhipp]

I am also an Access MVP and was just going to inquire as to what made them think that was necessary. It's okay, if you don't want to mention.

Yes, I believe a repair is fine because when uninstalling Office or any part thereof the uninstall may take some necessary shared files. The Repair will put them back. And based on your additional information, I would first run the repair of 2003 then 2007. You always start with the lowest version.

 

[GinaWhipp]

Oh, let me add... I would reboot between each uninstall/reinstall just to be safe!

 

[Galaxiom]

Two Access MVPs advised this.

Both suggested I at least uninstall and re-install Office 2007 after un-installing the Office 2013 trial. One of the MVP's said to be completely safe I should consider reformatting.

With due respect to competent MVPs, particularity present company, MVP status does not come from quality of advice but quantity.

 

[ions]

Thank you for everyone's comments.

Is it this community's opinion then that a repair on 2003 and then a repair on 2007 along with CCleaner will be sufficient for maintaining a clean MS Access development environment.

Simply doing repairs, and not having to uninstall Office, will be much more time efficient.

Thank you.

 

[GinaWhipp]

Umm, I would not use CCleaner at this stage, you have already uninstalled and reinstalled AND you should be fine. My opinion, just run the Repair starting at the lowest version first and rebooting in between and you should be fine. (And, I will say, I'm probably the only one that reboots in between reinstalls but it make me feel better.)

 

[ions]

Gina,

I haven't re-installed anything at this stage. The way I interpreted your comments was that I do not need to re-install if I simply run the repairs in the correct order.

This is what occurred so far:

1) Office 2013 trial was present / installed without my knowledge on the new machine

2) I installed Access 2003 + Excel 2003.
3) I then installed Office 2007 Ultimate with the entire suite selected.

4) I uninstalled the Office 2013 trial once I discovered it was present.

At this stage I am deciding whether to:

a) simply run repair in the correct order with reboots.
b) uninstall 2003 and 2007 and re-install in the correct order
c) reformat the drive and start from scratch.

Option a) is the most favorable for time efficiency while c) is the worst.

 

[GinaWhipp]

If it were me I'd do option (a). I would NEVER do option (c) unless my machine was infected with an un-repairable virus!

 

[ions]

Thank you Gina

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I expect the original advice would have been a belt and braces measure. In my experience, multiple versions of access can peaceful coexist, although moving between them will cause an automatic reinstall.

Eg. I tend to use A2003, and occasionally access has decided to change the access library from v11 to v15. No idea why. Took ages to solve the issue the first time it happened.

 

[ions]

AccessBlaster.

I image my machine every night automatically for complete recovery and file recovery and keep several archived images. On my old XP machine I use Norton Ghost and on my new machine I purchased Acronis.

I actually don't run Windows updates very often. When I worked for a large corporation in 2008 all the computers were updated automatically and one day we found all our access applications had a problem with them overnight. It turned out there was an error in the Windows Update that affected Access on all the machines. It took about a week for Microsoft to release a hotfix. Because of that experience I run every update on my machine when it's brand new and then generally never update again unless it's necessary. Perhaps this is a mistake in 2014?

 

[vbaInet]

For me I like a clean slate.

I would uninstall 2007, reboot, uninstall 2013, reboot, install 2007, reboot.

Reason being 2007 was the last software installed and during install it would have made some registry changes (or otherwise) in order to "fit in" and added some files/folders on top of 2013. Repair doesn't always adjust registry keys properly.

Format drive? Never!

 

[ions]

This is what I ended up doing so far. (Please note that I polled various MVPs and top end Access developers and there seems to be a split of opinions about how to clean my machine and if multiple versions of Office are safe)

I tried to repair Office 2003 but was getting cannot find Pro11.msi error during the repair. I couldn't locate the file in the Office 11 directory. I decided to uninstall Office 2003.

I repaired Access 2007 without issue and was asked to reboot by the repair utility. Please note I also have Access Runtime 2007 with SP3 installed on my machine which was installed after Office 2007. The reason I have Access Runtime also installed is because I deploy my app with SageKey and 95% of the users don't have Access on their machines. I was testing my SageKey install on this image, hence, Access Runtime is also on the machine.

Something very strange is happening now. When I first boot up my computer, opening Access, Excel or Word files is very slow (about 10-15 seconds) but opening an Access database with the SageKey startAccess utility is instantaneous. After about 10 minutes post boot, everything opens instantaneously again. According to SageKey this phenomenon cannot be caused by their software and could be caused by corruption due to multiple Office installs and they suggested I uninstall and re-install 2007.

I may just reformat the entire machine and start using Virtual Machines as some MVPs recommend. I will put Office 2007 on my main image and will create a VM for Office 2003 and a VM for my SageKey Application. I might have to buy another SSD as I only have 1 SSD and it’s only 256 GB. Windows 7 Pro takes about 50 GB I believe.

Dell is shipping me a USB stick that contains a setup with the option to not install Office 2013.

I will take a day or two to decide which way I will go.

a) Leave as is
b) Uninstall 2007
c) Reformat

Please feel free to add any comments or suggestions. As mentioned I will take a day or two more to decide and your input may alter my decision.

Thank you

 

[vbaInet]

I didn't know that 2003 was also in the mix and what I said in my post was in reference to Access alone, not the entire Office suite.
Different versions of Office can coexist it's just Access that sometimes can be a pain to reconfigure to work together.

 

[GinaWhipp]

What a mess...

You are going to have to uninstall and then reinstall. And yes, I will say some prefer VM's, never use 'em myself and never had a problem, just have to be careful not to open two different versions of Access at the same time.

 

[ions]

Gina,

I never had a problem having Access 2003 and 2007 on one image either. There are many opinions about this... some MVP's have been burned and they swear by VM for every office version.

Yes I agree this is a mess all because of Dell. I explicitly requested No Office 2013 and No Anti Virus on my image and the Dell salesman confirmed I would not have it on my new machine. (I have this all documented in emails.) When the machine arrived I looked in <All Programs> and there was no mention of Office anywhere. There was nothing on the Desktop either related to office. I proceeded to install Office 2003 and then Office 2007.

It was not until two - three weeks later that I noticed I had Office 15 options in the References section of the VBA IDE. I then looked in Uninstall and there to my shock was Microsoft Office. (It didn't even say the Office Version or year; just Microsoft Office.)

I don't understand why Dell would put a Trial in such incognito. It doesn't make any sense.

I am quite certain if Office 2013 was not present on my new machine I would not be experiencing any issues with Office 2003 and 2007 side by side as was the case on my old XP machine.

There are other issues with the Dell machine. This is the Flagship 15" Dell laptop M4800 a $2K + machine. I lost so much productivity trying to resolve driver issues with them which we seem to have a handle on now and then this Office 2013 bomb hit.

What I find most troubling about Dell is they are so nonchalant about their errors and mistakes. They have no consideration for my time... they just assume me spending hours (we are talking like 20+ hours now) resolving problems with them is normal.