in fact, the problems with Outlook 2000 are related to attempt by MSFT to get people onto Windows Live (from what I see on search results) - they are planning to try and rive more purchases of their products that way.

I DO want Word & Excel 2000 to work properly.

That's kinda the point though.

Why is it not assumed to be okay when once in a while MS makes something not work. Timeframe is the same, those old versions of Office are 10+ years old. Let them die, it's okay if they don't work.

If only everyone could force stuff like Apple dies and not get burned for it, we'd be rid of serial ports, PS/2 keyboards, and other antiquated garbage. Both of which I got along with brand new POS equipment this week.

Apple users are much more used to having forced updates to hardware every few years in some form or another. That's a good thing progress wise.

PC users should try to grasp that.

Switching to a Mac would require buying new everything, and it'd all be current and work great (and have a new interface to learn), but for some reason people are unwilling to do that when upgrading a PC.

Typed on my touchscreen WP7 phone with a "meatstick" ;) Excuse the reasonably good spelling. :D

Also, don't misunderstand too much, it was the "buy a mac" thing when you would have had the same issues getting moved over that got me started. :)

The boss at work has Macs at home that work just fine, and we have iPads and iPhones floating around that work great, not an Apple hater.

I benefit as a MS shareholder; I don't like it as a customer.

If software only lasts 8 years then it is more like a rental or lease, and the price should be adjusted downwards in proportion to that.

I have no problem with Word and Excel 2000 on 7. I had Outlook working too, but it's not compatible with the iPhone/iTunes.

ok, thx - I'll investigate my MS word crash later as I have an important date with some EtOH coming up.


any thoughts on how to use something other than DOS mode without the Permissions stuff in place?

I think we might all be a little lost as to what you're actually trying to do still.

So I'll start trying to be helpful, though I don't have Excel 2000 to actually try it on. :)

Typically, from an app within Windows, the open or save dialogs will call an API that will open the file system folder for Documents as specified in the registry.

In Vista/7, it would be C:\Users\CurrentUser\My Documents
In XP it was C:\Documents and Settings\CurrentUser\My Documents

So, if you have hard set references from to other files in the folder, I can see how that'd break it and it'd not be a version thing at all.

The folders can be moved around if you really want to. Basically My Documents is a folder that is tracked by the system, and it really doesn't care so much where it is on the filesystem. It's supposed to create a little more separation of the top level GUI of finding your docs vs. where the stuff is actually stored, so in theory you don't have to worry about it.

To change the location, go to Start, click on your username on the right hand side of the pane at the top, and you'll see your user folders. (This also assigns proper security to the view, so it shouldn't lock you out)

From there you can right click on My Documents, and it should have a location tab. From the location tab, you can move it and force it to be in the old location if you really want it to.

I'm not sure if that'll really fix the problem though (since I'm not really sure about what the problem is and what the command prompt has to do with it), so more details would be good.

The current top level problem is that I am trying to get the normal customizations I use in Winword and Excel 2000 to operate on the new Win 7 system.

[Having encountered this Permissions BS in Win 7 I also foresee add'l problems with it down the road.]

Now, when I did copy the customization files over to \My Docs for Word, I then tried to test them. When I tried to look into the options in Word, it crashed.

So that is another problem.

Hm. I wonder if it's that Word is running funny, or if it's because of the folder.

Can you put the customizations in a different folder to try them?

Also, have you tried running Word in compatibility mode and as admin?

The way it sandboxes apps from admin rights blows up lots of old stuff, that's one of the things I meant by loose programming, even MS was more than guilty of that. There are a lot of programs that run weird or not at all when you don't let them have free reign.

Try making a shortcut for Word on the desktop, right click, properties, go to the compatibility tab, and play with some options. You can run it in compatibility mode for XP, and possibly also run as administrator and see if the crash goes away when doing the same steps.

Win 7 Home ver. 64 bit -- can I even run as an admin.??

if so, how?

I'll also try the other stuff later on

thx for your help

If you don't have any other users set up and it was a normal install, your user account is by default an admin.

You can try it out easily, right click something like command prompt and click run as administrator. You'll either get a button if you're an admin, or a password box if you're not.

Even running as admin doesn't work the way it did in XP and earlier though, as much as people hated the UAC popup boxes in Vista (they are handled much more gracefully in 7), if you're paying attention, it keeps apps from screwing with things they shouldn't.

So if you're logged in as an admin, everything you run doesn't run with those rights unless you tell it to. Older stuff (MS stuff, Office 2000 etc. included) can have trouble with that.

well, this is Home ed. and it will sometimes not let me increase my rights --- maybe I don't know how to do that correctly.

The BAD PROBLEM is that Tools - Autocorrect in Word 2000 causes Word to crash - I never even get to see the tabs - except as grayed out images. Error msg is that Word has stopped working properly or some such.

Any ideas on that?

turns out only part of this problem is due to the 200 version of Word being "incompatible" with Win 7

Win 7 has an extremely poorly designed Permissions system, and moving your XP data files over can cause problems ind. of Office 2000
Windows 7 Take Ownership & Grant Permissions to Access Files & Folder
- towards the bottom of this long thread


Word 2000 also crashes whenever I try to close the program.

So that's not really a problem, right? Word is closing! :D

nope - won't close - maybe not the best term of art