Office 2003 plus PowerPoint 2007 ??

[Leon1]

I have Office 2003 installed on my laptop. I need to do a demonstration where I would have to show beginners how do use Powerpoint. Some will be using 2003 and others 2007. I therefor need both versions on Powerpoint installed. Can I do this? Can I simply install Powerpoint 2007? How do I keep it from overwriting (upgrading) the 2003 version?

[WendellB]

During the installation process (if you choose the advanced installation), it will give you the option of preserving the existing Office 2003, so you can have both. Are you planning to install the full Office 2007, or a "stand-alone" PowerPoint 2007? If you do the full version, it will replace Outlook 2003, as only one version of Outlook can be installed on a give PC. I'm also uncertain as to whether you can run both versions simultaneously - for sure it won't let you edit the same presentation in two versions at the same time.

[jscher2000]

In light of Wendell's comments, I'm sure my IT guys would suggest using a virtualized instance of the second install (using VMware Player). I'm not personally familiar with the technology, so I don't know how seamlessly it would work for this application, but if you need full live access to the product, rather than just some screen shots, it would give you that flexibility. A RAM upgrade might be needed...

[WendellB]

That's a good suggestion - another alternative would be VirtualPC if you are running an OS that will support it. And that would let you toggle between open applications, although the switch isn't exactly seamless. But it would let you run two versions of PowerPoint using identical PowerPoint files in each OS instance.

[Leon1]

Thanks for the replies. My plan is to only install Powerpoint 2007 at this stage. But I do need to run both versions at the same time - not with the same file. It seems I will just have to try! I don't know enough about vitual PC's to try that route.

[TerFar]

You can run Office 2003 and Office 2007 side by side but you will need to make a small registry edit to stop 'reconfiguration' each time you switch between versions.

The only exception is Outlook. You can only have ONE version of Outlook installed, so if you install Office 2007 over Office 2003, Outlook 2003 will be replced (and vice versa).

Terry

[Leon1]

OK, so what registry edit do I need to run Office 2003 (everything - including Powerpoint) and then also Powerpoint 2007. I will not be installing any other 2007 programs.

[Rebel]

OK, so what registry edit do I need to run Office 2003 (everything - including Powerpoint) and then also Powerpoint 2007. I will not be installing any other 2007 programs.

As far as I know, the registry edit only resolves the "reconfiguring" problem with Word (for the article, copy and paste "http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=762" - for some reason, I can't create a clickable link). If Terry is referring to another registry edit, perhaps he can post it?

[Leon1]

From the 2 articles it seems that the registry edit only applies to Word. Anyone know about Powerpoint?

[TerFar]

Although the hack is added to the Word part of the registry, it should stop Office trying to 'reconfigure' whether you are opening Word, Excel or PPt.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928091/en-us?FR=1

Terry

[jmblair]

I believe you can just load both and run either or both.

When I purchased my laptop 2+ years ago it came with Office 2007. I took one look at the new interfaces of the apps and decided that there was no pressing benefit to Office 2007 so installed Office 2003. The two coexisted until about six months ago when I decided it was time to go to 2007. Powerpoint was the most frequently used application on the laptop and the two versions seemed to coexist just fine. I do not recall intentionally trying to run the same presentation simultaneously on both versions.

John Blair

[xlrotor]

If you open a ppt file in one instance of powerpoint, and then try to open it again in another instance of powerpoint (could be the same powerpoint version or a different one), you should get a message saying that the file is locked for editing, and offers to open it in read-only mode (Excel does this, so I suspect ppt does, too). So you should be able to go ahead and have it open twice. If you don't like that, make a copy of the file to open in the second powerpoint.

Brian Murphy