Windows 8 and MS Word

Bill.Winegard wrote:
If you have not tried it yet, I have been using Kingsoft Office (Free) with Win8 for awhile now and like it quite a bit. I think it's better then Libre and it opens much faster.
http://www.ksosoft.com/

I use Kingsoft Office on my Android phone and tablet and like it on that platform.

mockturtle wrote:
I ran the Compatibility Mode and it showed that MS Word 2002 is 'Not Compatible'. Is there a free upgrade to Win 8.1 and will it allow more compatibility? It should be free. In fact, MS should pay us for 'pain and suffering' from the use of Windows 8. :W

It sounds more like you ran the compatibility checker rather than ran the installer in compatibility mode.

I didn't run extensive tests but I did verify that I could create/save/reopen files in both Word and Excel. There may be features that don't work that I didn't try.

Yes, the upgrade to Win 8.1 will be free. However, if software doesn't run in 8 it won't run in 8.1 either as those aren't the kind of improvements/changes they are making between the 2 versions.

Just for kicks, I installed Office 97 on a Win 8 machine and it seems to work fine for me there so 8 or 8.1 doesn;t make any difference.

If you have not tried it yet, I have been using Kingsoft Office (Free) with Win8 for awhile now and like it quite a bit. I think it's better then Libre and it opens much faster.
http://www.ksosoft.com/

I ran the Compatibility Mode and it showed that MS Word 2002 is 'Not Compatible'. Is there a free upgrade to Win 8.1 and will it allow more compatibility? It should be free. In fact, MS should pay us for 'pain and suffering' from the use of Windows 8. :W

burlmart wrote:
could my wife do this with our Offoce 97 disk on her W8 Dell?

I just tried installing Word and Excel 97 on my Win 8.1 machine running the setup in compatibility mode for Windows 98 and they both installed and seem to work fine. Word 97 actually seems to work better than Word 2002 as it doesn't seem to need to run as administrator.

Note: I did find one problem with Excel 97 where when I try to open the Visual Basic editor (for macro editing), the editor window opens then immediately closes. The VB Editor seems to work OK in Excel 2002.

strollin wrote:
I just installed Word and Excel 2002 on my machine running the Windows 8.1 Preview. They installed and seem to work fine. I did run the installer in Windows XP Compatibility mode. If you want to try that, find the Setup.exe file on the install CD and right-click on it, then select the Compatibility tab on the Properties dialog. You can choose the version of Windows compatibility you want, I chose Win XP with SP3.

The only weird thing I encountered was that Word wants to run as administrator. As an example, if I don't run it as administrator and select "Open" from the File menu then the "Open" dialog box doesn't pop to the front. I can click on it from the Task Bar and it will come to the front but won't do it on its own. Excel didn't seem to have this problem.

You can install LibreOffice if you wish but there will be a learning curve associated with it or you can install Word 2002 and run it and use the program you already know.

could my wife do this with our Offoce 97 disk on her W8 Dell?

I just installed Word and Excel 2002 on my machine running the Windows 8.1 Preview. They installed and seem to work fine. I did run the installer in Windows XP Compatibility mode. If you want to try that, find the Setup.exe file on the install CD and right-click on it, then select the Compatibility tab on the Properties dialog. You can choose the version of Windows compatibility you want, I chose Win XP with SP3.

The only weird thing I encountered was that Word wants to run as administrator. As an example, if I don't run it as administrator and select "Open" from the File menu then the "Open" dialog box doesn't pop to the front. I can click on it from the Task Bar and it will come to the front but won't do it on its own. When Word is run as administrator then the dialog pops to the front just as it should. Excel didn't seem to have this problem.

You can install LibreOffice if you wish but there will be a learning curve associated with it or you can install Word 2002 and run it and use the program you already know.

No, I didn't install the trial version of Microsoft Office.

1775 wrote:
This was true until Windows 8. In Win 7, MS made sure that there was a compatibility mode down to DOS, and included Win XP mode on the advanced version of Win 7 to be able to run anything that Win 7 had a problem with. Win 8 dumped all of that.

I have Win 8 Pro on my laptop and it does allow you to run software in compatibility mode. I don't know about other versions.

I installed Microsoft Office 2002 just to see if it gave me any grief. The install went fine and Word 2002 seems to work fine.

Many new PCs come with a trial version of Microsoft Office installed.

A question for mockturtle. Did you uninstall the trial version (if installed) prior to installing Word 2002?

I hate 8!

Have used open office for several years with no problems at all.