[mfallon]

I'm thinking of buying a laptop with Vista. The salesman suggested that I also purchase Microsoft Office for Vista because he stated that older versions of Office won't work. I'm curently using Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 (Word, Excel, etc.) Does anyone know if it's compatible with Vista, or is the saleman just trying to.......

thanks
Mark

[jmwills]

Office 2003 is fully compatible with Vista. Go back and terll him/her that, then take your business elsewhere.

[Alex Ethridge]

First, see the sticky at the top of this forum for a list of compatible programs. All of MS Office 2003 is in that list of compatible programs.

Next, don't ever take a salesman's word for anything. They get no training, have very little experience, and only repeat what they've heard. And while I'm on the subject or repeating what one has heard, remember "they say" and "I heard" are the two biggest liars in the world.

When a sales clerk says something, verify, verify, verify. And that goes for most techs too.

[Bob Cerelli]

Office2000 works just fine. The only minor problem is, if instead of using the default Contacts, you use a Personal Address Book instead. But then you wouldn't likely be using that on any of the later versions either.

But have been using Office2003 since the beta days with no problem at all either.

[mfallon]

Thanks for your help. I thought it might work but I was looking for a sanity check.
Thanks again, Mark

[kinseygirl]

I just bought a new PC with Vista and feel like I should have put beginner as my skill level. When the sales guy told me Microsoft Office 2003 may not be compatable, I was almost sick and getting angry as I only purchased it 7 months ago, but insisted on trying and verifying anyway. So glad to have found this thread. The way things are worded when you are uploading and appear to be having trouble is very confusing. Hopefully I will figure that out tonight. Unfortunately, my new PC was not as "plug & play" as my last 2 thanks to Vista and certainly not as much so as I desperately hoped it to be. I am, however, very excited about some of the search and viewing features. Love that you get to preview a thumbnail of the document prior to opening and to preview the opened tabs without popping it up to remember which is which. What a timesaver!

[DaveA]

Also tell the jerk of a clerk, there is NO "Office for Vista". The new version is Office 2007.

[theoneandonlynat]

What I would like to know is whether or not the different versions of Office are compatible with each other. e.g. Sam writes his homework in Office for Vista and tries to print it off at school where they have Office 2003 but finds he can't open his work. Is this because of compatibility issues? How can he resolve them?

[DoubleHelix]

Vista is an operating system. There is no Vista version of Office. There's Office 97, XP, 2000, 2003, and 2007. Office 2007 has new file types that cannot be read by previous versions of Office. The files should be saved as the previous version's file type if they need to be shared among versions.

[Bob Cerelli]

If you have Office2007 at home and are using Word2007, and will regularly be needing to open and print the file on previous versions of Word, the simplest thing to do is have Word2007 configured to save as Word97-2003 format by default. Then you don't need to keep selecting it each and every time you save a document.

Click on the logo/icon on the top left.
Select Word Options button at the bottom
Click on Save
Under Save files in this format, select Word97-2003 Document

Now it will be set to that format as the default setting.

[NYCLatinLefty]

Originally Posted by mfallon

I'm thinking of buying a laptop with Vista. The salesman suggested that I also purchase Microsoft Office for Vista because he stated that older versions of Office won't work. I'm curently using Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 (Word, Excel, etc.) Does anyone know if it's compatible with Vista, or is the saleman just trying to.......

thanks
Mark

First of all NEVER rely or base buying anything on the opinion of a Sales Rep. They have minimal, if any, training and are there to sell the more expensive, costly, high-end items to help their commissions and sales record.

Secondly, go to the Windows Vista website and you will find a list that states all the programs, hardware and components that are compatable with Vista.

Third point, when you do buy Vista decide on whether you want Vista Home Premium or Ultimate because with Home and Home Premium you lose the function to automatically fax from within a program. That feature, which was common in Windows XP is now relegated to Business and Ultimate.

When you have done this go back to the store and inform the Sales Rep that you are taking your business elsewhere and spending more at the the other location because they didn't try to jerk you or gave you bad information in order to increase their sales. It will make you feel SO--O-O-O MUCH BETTER.

[wildbadger]

Hi, I loaded Office 2000 onto a laptop with Vista 2 months ago, my daughter's been using this for schoolwork since, no problem. Last week the screen froze so she pressed the off button, restarted and found all her saved documents had gone, all pictures, all desktop shortcuts, all music, the lot. They are not in recycle /trash.
So she reloaded some music and pictures, shut it down normally, and when next started up there was nothing there of that either.
It appears to work fine as a word processor so long as EVERYTHING is saved to flash. Has anyone any experience of this and any suggestions?
the guy in the shop said office 2000 couldn't be run with vista, so I would have to take 2000 off and buy office 2007, but 2000 seemed to do fine for 2 months, so I don't understand how it has suddenly gone wrong. The laptop has also taken to greeting us with `welcome to your new Aspire laptop, thank you for purchasing this product' etc., despite having already been set up. Help!?
I think it has to be the laptop as ofice wouldn't have anything to do with the pictures, but I don't know enough to argue with a techy guy.
Thanks!

[Bob Cerelli]

The screen freezing and losing things like music files, pictures and shortcuts has nothing to do with the version of Office. It more sounds like a problem with the Operating system. It is the reason you need to make backups.

[jmwills]

Agreed. Vista is fully compatible with any version of Office going back to 2000.

[wildbadger]

Thanks for that, but as a really stupid question, what is an operating system? Is that Vista or the laptop itself? I had intended to go back anyway + argue that it's not my Office 2000 that's the problem, but it's nice to know I'm not talking total trash about that!