Tag: compatibility

Counting down…

David E. CraigLeave a comment

With one month and one week to go, it is time to start moving off Windows XP and Office 2003. Here is another great article from Microsoft about how/why:

Support for Windows XP and Office 2003 ends April 8, 2014 — what’s next?
http://blogs.technet.com/b/firehose/archive/2014/02/26/support-for-windows-xp-and-office-2003-ends-april-8-2014-what-s-next.aspx

A few interesting highlights from the article:

  • Windows XP and Office 2003, however, have been supported for more than a decade, or since “Baywatch” went off the air.
  • Computers currently running Windows XP and Office 2003 won’t stop working on April 9, but over time security and performance will be affected: Many newer apps won’t run on Windows XP; new hardware may not support Windows XP; and without critical security updates, PCs may become vulnerable to harmful viruses, spyware and other malicious software that can steal or damage personal information and business data.
  • Office 365 — the next generation of familiar Office productivity applications in the cloud. The subscription-based service offers familiar Office tools and maintains file integrity and design when documents are edited by multiple people, and it provides enterprise-class security and privacy.

If you are considering the move and have questions about your Microsoft Office Integrated Line of Business Applications, there are many ways Microsoft and Microsoft partners can assist you in assessing and remediating these solutions.

You can learn more about Office 365 for your business here: http://blogs.office.com/office365forbusiness/

Script to Migrate Normal.dot

David E. CraigLeave a comment

When you deploy Office 2010 over an existing install of Office 2003, one thing that will happen is that user settings in Microsoft Word (auto-text, styles, macros,etc.) will not translate forward. This is because as part of the migration process, the Normal.dot for Office 2003 is renamed to Normal11.dot. The following article details this:

The article outlines a set of steps to manually replace the original Normal.dot. However, it does not provide a means to perform this step during setup/deployment or as a script to be deployed as part of a post-install or login.

The following is a JavaScript sample that performs the steps outlined in the KB article above:

shell = new ActiveXObject('WScript.Shell'); 
userPath = shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings('%UserProfile%'); 
var path = userPath + "\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Templates\\";
var fs = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
var newNormal = fs.GetFile(path + "normal.dotm");
newNormal.Move(path + "new_normal.dotm");
var oldNormal = fs.GetFile(path + "normal11.dot");
oldNormal.Move(path + "normal.dot");