More on Office 98, Office 2001 simultaneous installation

After some investigation, it appears that Office Manager 4.2.1 may be the root of yesterday's conflict report where simultaneous installations of Office 98 and Office 2001 cause a number of problems.

Apparently, Office Manager 4.2.1 is not fully compatible with Mac OS 9, and can cause erratic behavior, including generic appearance of icons, inability to save in Word 2001 format (restricted to Word 98), and incorrect identification of Office files in the Finder.

So it seems that while running simultaneous installations of Office 98 and Office 2001 under Mac OS 9.x is problematic, using the two versions in tandem under Mac OS 8.6 causes no problems. Alternatively, removing Office Manager may resolve some issues, but also hamper Office 98's functionality.

That being said, Brian Dorman offers an unconfirmed workaround for properly running both versions of Office under Mac OS 9:

1. "1. Completely unistall both Office 98 and Office 2001
2. Drag copy Office 98 to your hard drive
3. Run all of the 98 patches and updaters available from MS
4. Make a backup of the completely-up-to-date 98 folder
5. Completely uninstall 98
6. Drag copy Office 2001 to your hard drive
7. Run all of the 2001 patches and updaters available from M
8. 7A. Optional: make a backup of the completely-up-to-date 2001 folder for future use
9. Drag copy your completely-up-to-date Office 98 folder back to your hard drive
10. Delete 'Microsoft Office First Run' from the Microsoft Office 98 > Office subfolder"

Insight on this issue? Drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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