So! It is well documented at just how cutting edge and radical I am. As you all know, I'm a trend maker, not a trend follower
I have no cell phone, I only just got WiFi for the H/PC and today I bit the bullet and upgraded to Office 2003.
I know, I know. You're all stunned silly by this brazen move. I did, however, think it worthwhile just reporting back on the upgrade in case anyone else was looking to run an office upgrade with PIM synchronisation being a key concern.
I moved from Office 2000 SR1 Premium SP3, up to Office System 2003 Professional - despite the fact that I don't use it I feel cheated at the idea I have lost FrontPage... but that is another matter.
Backup
I decided that I would perform an over install. So threw in the and let it warm up the installer while I made copies of my Outlook PST.
I recommend that everyone who is migrating between outlook versions not only backup their PST file
before, but also the full contents of these folders:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
(Your PST file may be in one of those anyway, depending on how you have it all setup
)
Why am I advocating you backup these small files? These stray's contain your message rules, view customisation settings, toolbars and all configuration data apart from account settings. If you want to revert back down the Outlook version chain and not have to setup the program from scratch, you'll be wanting these.
If you are Migrating from Outlook 97, 98, 2000 and would like to backup your account settings you can use the Accounts manager in Outlook and perform an Export -or- pay a visit to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\OMI Account Manager\Accounts
Export everything under here. Both give methods give the same result. Please be aware that Outlook XP and 2003 do not make use of these registry Keys and lack import functionality from older account setting files
(though you can import them into Outlook Express 6 and suck them over into Outlook
).
Install
Now then, back to the CD.
It detected that I had an older version of Office on it, as always I performed a custom install and got rid of all the useless disk space wasting mess that comes with Office these days
(Personal opinion
).
The screen after that - as I'm doing a custom install - asks again what you want to do with the old version of Office. I told it to completely remove it; all of it.
Off it goes, copies files and has a rattle of the hard disk for 5 minutes or some, comes back reporting that the installation has completed successfully. Of course all my shortcut icons are broken. I accidentally clicked on the old Outlook entry in the quick launch area, and to my surprise it brought up the Office 2000 installer subsystem which attempted to reinstall Outlook 2000.
To my horror, when I looked in Add / Remove Programs, Office 2000 SR1 Premium was still listed, the installer there was unable to locate the MSI process database - which Office 2003's installer had systematically deleted - and so was unable to add/remove/upgrade the Office 2000 install.
Having then looked in Program Files, half of Office 2000 was still sitting there in the folder - one Office program and all the Office 2000 support files. Which Office program you ask? Yes, you guessed it. FrontPage.
FrontPage 2000 for its part is completely unusable, as it thinks that it's been uninstalled and needs to repair itself - but it cannot because the MSI database was deleted. Joy!
So, residing myself to being stuck with two versions of Office until I next format, the next task is to patch Office 2003.
Patch her up
I strongly recommend that you do this before attempting to launch any Office applications, particularly Outlook. 2003 is a reasonably mature product now, it has 2 Service Packs under its belt, and those SP's contain a lot of fixes - if there are any in there that improve the PST conversion & repair logic, they're more than worth having.
We have a Patch guide for all versions of Office here:
http://205.245.49.105/qlink/?linkID=18
Running Outlook
Once that was done, time to actually load up. Outlook took one look at the PST, gave a thumbs down and busily started performing conversions on the database. My PST was 180MB at the time and it took about 60 seconds to do it and upgrade all the settings files/accounts.
Rules
Then up popped a bunch of error messages regarding my message rules. It had imported the main points of the rule set, but hadn't been able to assign the rules to the account, so I had to manually go through and reset a good 50% of my message rules back to the correct mail account
(of which I currently have 44
).
The 2003 Spam filters were quick off the marks and started clearing out the junk for me - bliss.
After a quick look about, all seemed well, though I did notice I had more email now than I had before... quite a lot more.
In fact I had new email messages from February 2005
It would seem that my assumption over PST conversion and repair logic is accurate. Under Outlook 2000 it looks as though I had lost email in the PST file - this is depite running inbox integrity checker over it every 6 months or so. Genuinely a big surprise - and no cmonex, nothing to do with the HCL - so from this regard, well worth the upgrade, it'll take me some time to get used to 2003, I feel as though I get to see a lot less email in my lists than I do under 2000, but I'll explore and change the fonts about I am sure.
Everything else looks great with it.
So, time to throw a H/PC at it - crunch.
ActiveSync
I've always setup ActiveSync so that synchronisation has to be manually asked for, not automatic. Today I feel once more vindicated in that decision, as ActiveSync thought that there was one huge database problem and after going through a series of error message, sync and conversion errors manages to get ActiveSync wanting to re-sync both sides. I took a look at what it wanted to do, and ultimately I would have ended up with two copies of all my PIM information in one database. While this isn't major for Contacts or Tasks - if anyone has ever had to clear out duplicated from the Calendar database, you'll know that it is nigh impossible to catch them all in a reasonable period of time.
So I instructed ActiveSync to replace the Jornada's database with the Outlook when I had finished experimenting, and everything went A-OK.
So, if you are still with me at this point, let me summarise my advice and experiences from this procedure:
- Sync down all your H/PC's or other PDA's to the PST, and stop adding PIM information until after the process - this way you can be confident in forcing a PDA database scrub if you too experience the same set of errors.
- Backup the PST & Associated Settings information from Under Documents and Settings.
- Be sure to note down details on your Message Rules, you may need them.
- Uninstall all older versions of Office, reboot and delete c:\program files\microsoft office before attempting to Install the new one - it'll save you from a similar mess at the hands of an ultimately useless upgrade install routine.
- Patch Office in full before you attempt to launch anything.
- Set ActiveSync to manual synchronisation for the duration of this journey. Do not allow it to combine or replace information on the main PST when you re-sync - or you'll probably need that PST backup.
- It's worth the upgrade for my missing email alone - I've yet to pass judgement over Office 2003 as to whether I think it's worth the upgrade (and this is coming from someone who was on the central, first stage beta team when Office 2003 was in development). I've waited all this time to upgrade... strange really!
i hate to edit my little html stuff in notepad. so... i may downgrade back to office xp, the shortcuts were better with office xp as well than with 2003. 
cant keep doing that for too long... i'll fix this next week 
