Dear Forum Gurus and Users,
Are legacy versions of MS Office (ie. those prior to MS Office 2007) fully compatible with Windows Vista?
On the contrary, I assume that MS Office 2007 does not function on Windows XP and earlier versions? Otherwise it would be incredibly slow…???
Thanks in advance!
Avastfan1
I have office97 which I’m sure wouldn’t work on Vista but I think the later version from 2003 on I would think may be OK, if not you may be able to run them in compatibility mode, so Vista acts like an earlier version of windows, like XP, etc.
I would have thought office 2007 would work on XP and probably be quicker on XP (rather than slower) than on Vista. There are many complaints that Vista runs programs slower as it is so heavy on resources anyway.
Personally this is my last version of MS Office, when I eventually update my system or build/buy another I will most likely use Open Office, not only is it free, compatible with MS Office formats, not to mention it should run on both XP and Vista.
I installed the MS Office 2002 on Vista without problem! 
MS Office 2007 works on XP.
I do not test older versions on Vista, but I think Office 2003 and XP will run on Vista.
David’s right, I tried to install Office97 on Vista and it would NOT work.
I don’t think it will work even in compatibility mode as I don’t think Vista would offer win98 but if it offered win2k or winXP as the compatibility (e.g. Vista pretending to be either of those OSes) it may work that way.
I have Word and Excel 97 running fine on XP without compatibility mode on XP I only have one program that I need to run in compatibility mode in XP and that is Quicken 98 and accounts package and I need to run it as win98se.
In theory, it offers compatibility to Windows 95…
But some things, like Kernel Patching, it will not allow even in compatibility mode so some programs still won’t work
I run Office 2003 perfectly on Vista. I do not plan on purchasing newer version of office, and if I do it will be because of school.
There are deep changes in interface from 2003 to 2007 version.
Before upgrading, be sure you want them: just one toolbar, commands change places, some commands are very ‘hidden’ if not missing in new version…