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General discussion

Two versions of Powerpoint on same machine

Mar 4, 2005 10:23PM PST

I work in a Mac environment but I also have a Windows machine at home and sometimes they ask me Windows questions. My boss wanted to know if you could install a later version of PowerPoint on a Windows machine that already has a version installed , or if it will overwrite the earlier version. I really don't know. Can someone tell me or give a link to the info?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Not easy...
Mar 5, 2005 12:08AM PST

I'd rather not detail all the issues about this, but will share the solution.

Install 2 parallel installs of Windows. You'll end up with a BOOT MENU to select which copy to run. Install one version in one OS and another in the copy.

The reasons for this are simple, but I'd rather not discuss it.

Bob

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(NT) (NT) Thanks. I suspected it wasn't easy.
Mar 9, 2005 5:51PM PST
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Of course you can!
Mar 10, 2005 4:51PM PST

Simply do a custom install and install to a different folder.

I run Windows XP Pro and FOUR Versions of MS Office, 97 through 2003 without a dual-boot system. The only concern you may have is the components, such as clipart and org charts. These don't care what version you're running and simply upgrade all the versions of THOSE components (plug-ins). If you don't use these components, don't worry about it!

I installed 97 to C:\Office97, and so on... all in folders right on my C drive. If your first one is in Program Files, that's okay, but you should NOT put other versions there. Anywhere but there. Happy

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MS noted this, but we found it was not ...
Mar 10, 2005 9:26PM PST

We found that the system didn't behave the same as the dual boot system. Here's what we found.

The shared DLLs that each office installed upgraded the prior office. Why this mattered to us was we were writting a VBA addon to Word and wanted it to work on Windows 98/Office 97 as well as Windows XP/Office 2003.

This shared DLL issue knocked out the easy path of just one OS and partition.

Bob