Pick the right tools for your Office 2010 migration Microsoft reports the take-up of Office 2010 is the fastest for a software product in the company’s history. All well and good, but some doubters remain. Microsoft is keen to mop up migration and has assembled a bag of tools to smooth the process. The company’s in-house tech evangelist, Simon May, refers to Office 2010 …
Easy way to break office 2010, MS have no answer.
Scenario, existing 2003 installation with word, excel, powerpoint, access and outlook. Design your msp to remove 2003 EXCEPT word 2003. Install the new word excel powerpoint access and outlook.
Then have a user click the OLD outlook 2003 shortcut that they dutifully copied to their desktop because they are lazy and didnt want to go through the start menu with, then marvel as a limited user with no installation rights trashes the 2010 installation thoroughly (as the office shortcuts are advertised shortcuts that kill 2010 installations).
absolute fecking nightmare. The fix? remove and reinstall 2010 as it kills the MACHINE not the profile. Great.
I should point out that this also exists in 2003 -> 2007 too. We used up an M$ call for this (good old MSDN AA) they had no answer other than remove 2003 completely (which removes the installer stub that is embedded into the "advertised shortcut").
Advertised shortcuts with embedded installers are evil!
I've started using the 2010 office products recently and it's a real pain in the arse re-learning where everything is. Don't get me wrong, there are some nice touches in there as well.
However, a word (sorry) to M$ - This is absolutely the last time I change to a product of yours if you muck around with the UI again. I'm sick and tired of having to re-learn what I already know how to do.
...migrating to Office 2010 is going to be a PITA; why not try a pilot with LibreOffice (or A.N.Other)?
YMMV depending on what custom add-ons you have, and you really should consider a support contract.
But pain is pain and not at least looking at the alternatives is just burying your head in the sand.
At the very least you may make you MS sales rep panic and get a discount.
That anyone has to turn the roll-out of a word-processor and spreadsheet into a major IT and logistics exercise is a fail of epic proportion. This in a world where there are billions of "mission critical" macros driving serious business every day.
No wonder the world is in the state it is -- when this is to be seen as an epic engineering feat/undertaking.
To say that it is Douglas Adamsian in its ridiculousness would be an understatement.
I've not had to deal with the VBA migrations as I do mostly documentation type documents, but it sounds like MS hasn't fully gotten their compatibility act together yet. Oddly enough I've been finding LibreOffice is required as a compatibility layer for some DOC files, as the MS translator botches them a lot. I've been a victim of this on more than one occasion and had my bacon and schedule saved by Open/LibreOffice's compatibility with older MS documents that newer MS Office didn't have. Not sure why MS Office 2007/2010 aren't fully compatible with MS Office, but c'est la vie. As long as there is a workaround, I'm good. But the result is even if you deploy 2010, you pretty much have to also deploy LibreOffice with it as a backup.
I still cant find any real/actual information on why office 2010 is better then 2003. 2003 takes 2 or 3 seconds at max to loads, 2007 and 2010 takes 10 seconds.
ok we are on about seconds but in this world where we have the most powerful machines of all times i bet my old win3.5 with mono screen laptop boots and loads office(equivalent) quicker
With the ribbon, why cant i drag and drop sections about and have a simple button to reset it on the main file menu. Who do MS ask for input into there new products, themselves!!!?
cant i just have something that runs allot smoother but without all the add on crap a 'normal' person using wants, say i just want to write a standard doc, abit of colour text, bullet points different fonts and i may splash out an put a picture in
finally what is with the default paper size, i have bought a Uk product, give me A4 not dam Letter and why do they think i need a 2.5cm border - waste - wak it down to 1cm all round thank you!
Ive found the opposite. 2010 loads substantially quicker than 2003- on our 1g RAM 2ghz dual core optiplex 380s running a mix of XP and W7. In fact i'd say first run of 2003 and 2010 are the same, afterwards switching between closing and opening other apps are almost instantaneous in 2010 and a few seconds in 2003. Obviously outlook opens word in both cases so if you have outlook open the word opens immediately in both. Powerpoint used to be the slowest in 2003, 2010 is damn quick at this too. Still little support for more media options though.
A4 can be specified in the MST installation. If you have already installed office then create a supplementary MST and deploy in GPO - it will update the installation. Far better than faffing about with office upgrade wizard in 2003.
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