Will Office 2003 work with Windows 8?

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Anonymous

Hello Cody

Microsoft Office 2003 suites and applications aren’t compatible with Windows 8 (or Windows 8 Pro).

If you have Office 2003, it’s recommended that you upgrade to a newer version of Office to avoid any potential problems.

For more information, read this knowledge base article:

Office 2003 applications are not compatible with Windows 8

You should also go to the Windows Compatibility Center to see if the applications and devices on your PC are compatible with Windows 8.

Thanks...

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58 additional answers

Anonymous

2012-11-01T05:15:59+00:00

What specifically are the compatibility issues?

It's odd, there is so little change between W7 and W8 for desktop programs, yet a program that ran fine in W7 is suddenly incompatible with W8.

I'm curious too, as I'm running XP/Office 2003, and the requirement to upgrade Office as well moves my total upgrade cost from $40 to $390, which is a "no-go" for a 6-year old PC that I'm considering upgrading.

Perhaps a possible workaround is to use a VM under Windows 8 and run MS Office 2003 in that, but I'm not sure my PC supports hardware virtualization either, grr...

It would be nice if MS offer a similar low upgrade price for Office 2003 ('especially considering that XP/Office 2003 was a popular combo). If wishes were horses.... :-)
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Anonymous

2012-11-02T13:48:07+00:00

I have Office 2003 installed on a Windows 8 VM and it seems to work OK. I can't think of any reason it shouldn't, do you have a particular worry that you would like tried out?
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Anonymous

2012-11-17T23:38:26+00:00

I have been running Office 2003 on Windows 7 for a two years. It does not correctly understand the filing system (neither do I but thats another matter) in that it will not deal with libraries. It is vital for me that I can run office 2003 as I have over 10 years of emails stored that I frequently need to access. The lack of a proper email system in Win 7 and Win 8 is sufficient for me not to use the almost free version of Win 8 (£14.50 in the UK) that I have been offered for my newish and very expesnive computer. It looks like I will have to study compatibility problems in greater depth.
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Anonymous

2012-11-18T07:08:45+00:00

I'm running Office 2003 on Win 8 with the Compatibility pack that allows 2003 to read documents created with later versions of Office. Everything seems to be working OK, but I'm not a heavy user.

I have 2 PC's. One was running Win 7 and Office 2003, the other was running XP and Office 2003. I've upgraded both to Win 8. The Win 7 machine upgraded without having to reinstall Office 2003. The XP machine, I had to reinstall Office 2003 from original CD's and reactivate. I also applied all the relevant patches manually from the Microsoft Download site. A little tedious but necessary. The reinstall was expected as per MS documentation.

So all is going well except for one thing. On the machine that was Win 7, when I run Windows Update, it finds the latest Office 2003 patches and applies them automatically. On the machine that was XP, Windows Update does NOT find the latest Office 2003 patches.

Anyone know or have an idea why this may be happening and a solution to correct this. Of course I can still do the patching manually but of course would like to have it automatic.

Thanks

David
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