ARCHIVED: In Windows, can I install and run multiple versions of Microsoft Office?

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Microsoft does not recommend installing multiple versions of any Office product, but it is generally possible to install and use more than one version of Office on a single Windows computer. For example, you can install and use both Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same computer.

Warning: Office suites downloaded from IUware are incompatible with other installed versions of Office. The IUware-installed version will continually ask for an activation key.

Before deciding to install multiple versions of Microsoft Office, make sure your hard drive has enough available space. This is especially important for the initial installation of Office 2000, for which UITS recommends a minimum 900MB of free drive space. The completed installation will not be this large, but the initial temporary files copied to the hard drive during the installation require large amounts of free drive space.

Order of installation

If you want to install and use more than one version of Office on the same computer, you must install the earliest version first. For example, if you want to use both Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same computer, you must install Office 2003 first. This step is necessary because of the way registry keys, shared programs, file extensions, and other settings are managed for each version of Office, and for the programs that are included with each version. The order of installation for different versions of Office follows:

  1. Office 95
  2. Office 97
  3. Office 2000
  4. Office XP
  5. Office 2003
  6. Office 2007

Installing Office XP

By default, Office XP will install over any previous version of Microsoft Office. To keep a previous version of Microsoft Office:

  1. Change the installation location for Office XP to something other than the default selection. For example, it is easy to change the location to:
      /Program Files/Microsoft Office XP/

    If you don't change the location, the installation of Microsoft Office XP will overwrite files from previous versions.

  2. When the installation program offers to remove earlier versions of Office, check Keep these programs to prevent their deletion; however, if you forgot to change the installation directory, your earlier Office programs will be deleted no matter what you do.

Multiple versions of Outlook

Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007 cannot coexist with any previous versions of Outlook. All previous versions of Outlook will be removed during the installation process of Office 2000, XP, 2003, or 2007 even if during Office setup, in the Removing Previous Versions dialog box, you've selected Keep these programs.

Potential problems with multiple versions of Office

  • Microsoft Clip Art Gallery and Microsoft Graph will not run correctly when installed on a computer system running an older version of Microsoft Office. Because of the way the registry entries are used, UITS does not recommend that you install multiple versions of these programs.
  • Because the Office 2000 shortcut bar uses Windows Installer shortcuts, it cannot use the existing toolbars or buttons from earlier versions of the Office shortcut bar.
  • Office 95, 97, and 2000 all use the same shortcuts under the Start menu to start programs. Office 2000 will overwrite these shortcuts during installation. If you rename the Office 95 or 97 shortcuts before you install Office 2000, you can use the shortcuts for both sets of programs on the Start menu; however, this will require large amounts of available RAM to handle opening all of these programs at one time. Plan on 16MB of RAM per application launched on startup, beyond what is initially used by Windows 95, 98, and NT.

This information has been adapted from Microsoft Help and Support articles 218861 and 928091.

This is document ahos in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 12:49:19.