Office 2003 -> Office 2007

dasadler
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Office 2003 -> Office 2007

Post by dasadler »

I finally talked my wife into letting me remove Office 2003 from her Windows 7 computer and install Office 2007. She is not a fan of change and when things are working, has no interest in changing anything. Actually, it was not my power of persuasion… she is fed up with Outlook problems, so a clean install is what we decided. Next year (2019) I hope to replace her computer with a Windows 10/Office 2016 machine

There has been no modification to her Office 2003 except for a few years ago, she had someone install Outlook 2007 because of Outlook problems. I believe most of the Outlook problems stemmed from issues associated with the Vietnamese language and Unicode (?) – or the way the characters were handled back then.

Anyway, due to all the Outlook issues, I suspect some of the problem might be in a corrupted PST file. Every time I ran scanpst I would get and correct) errors. Then, when I ran Outlook again, the PST file would have errors again. So, I am thinking it might be best to not save the PST file at all – just do a complete uninstall of Office then a fresh install of Office 2007.

Is there anything I should do to make this as painless as possible?
Don

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HansV
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Re: Office 2003 -> Office 2007

Post by HansV »

I agree it would be best to install Office 2007 from scratch, and to let Outlook create a new .pst file.
If you are still able to open the old .pst file after installing Office 2007, you could copy messages, contacts and appointments to the new file.
Best wishes,
Hans

dasadler
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Re: Office 2003 -> Office 2007

Post by dasadler »

Thanks Hans, I thought .pst files could only be opened in Outlook... that is to say be imported into Outlook. How would I copy contact and messages to another .pst file? would I need to rename the old .pst file before opening? On a related not, I fear part of the problem may be in the messages in the old .pst file so maybe I will only copy the contacts.

Also, she uses Gmail and in her old Outlook, I set that up as a POP3 account so she could have access to messages even when offline. My son tells me that is no longer necessary - to just let Outlook figure it out... he may be talking about Outlook 2016, though.
Don

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HansV
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Re: Office 2003 -> Office 2007

Post by HansV »

You can rename the old .pst file, but it's not really necessary.
You can simply open it using File > Open > Outlook Data File.
The .pst file will be listed in the navigation pane on the left hand size of the main Outlook window.
You can copy/paste items from one folder to another, or drag and drop them.

If I remember correctly, Outlook 2007 can figure out the required settings automatically if you supply the email address and password. But it's a long time ago...
Best wishes,
Hans

dasadler
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Re: Office 2003 -> Office 2007

Post by dasadler »

Thanks for all the help. just a quick follow up.

I did delete all previous versions of Office. I installed Office 2007 but for some reason Outlook kept crashing which was what I was trying to fix all along. So, uninstalled Office 2007 and installed Office 2016. It took a while getting things to work (mostly) but we are still figuring things out. We are having some issues with Outlook but at least it is not crashing. I am addressing Outlook issues in that forum.

Thanks for the help.
Don