This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft Office 2007 migration aches foreshadow 2010

Pain now, pain later

More pain ahead?

Helm predicted more organizations like Benchmark and MSD would hit pain as they finally make the move to Office 2007 from Office 2003.

"There where some pretty significant changes from [Office] 2003 to 2007 so those interfaces that macros use to control Office - some of those macros will break coming across," he said. "We are just seeing this problem now because so many organizations decided to sit tight and so many others skipped a version," Helm said.

There are also problems in store for those moving to the up-coming Office 2010 - whether they are coming from Office 2007 or 2003.

Among the changes in Office 2010: a "makeover" of VBA to support 64-bit plus updates to the Object Model. There's also concern over the smoothness of integration between the different Office applications, as Microsoft has added a brand-new Outlook Social Connector and Groove collaboration software has been re-engineered to work as a SharePoint Workspace, according to analyst Forrester Research.

Helm said: "A lot of people looked at the Office file format and UI changes in [Office] 2007 and said: 'We will skip this problem' and now people are really thinking it's time to get on the most current version, and there are people who skipped a version as a matter of course," Helm told us. "Both will be looking at the new Office. We may see more compatibility problems being discovered now than when Office 2007 came out."

Office macros written using VBA are the way people build add-ins to applications like spreadsheets or email systems in their jobs to provide short cuts or features unique to their business.

Often, it's business people who build macros - not engineers - meaning macros tend to mushroom, and it becomes nearly impossible to really know how many exist. Unless you catalog them all, you'll only know there's an issue when an Office upgrade causes breakages and people can't work.

This can breed anger, and in some cases, it will see operations rollback to the old version of Office.

There were significant changes in the code between Office 2003 and Office 2007 in the areas of installation and customization, file format, security, interface, and object model that impact all those Outlook, Excel, Access. Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote staples used by business users.

Microsoft has documented the changes between Office 2003 to 2007 and has published a some migration guide here.

Blake, who is now looking at Office 2010, criticized the company's work. "Microsoft has only responded to the known issues. We are trying to report unknown issues, but they have not been very useful." He criticized Microsoft for releasing add-ons to solve some problems that are not included as part of the core product and make working with clients and co-consultants hard.

With Office 2010 coming in the first-half of this year, the company has also released an application compatibility assessment guide and a set of recommendations for moving to Office 2010.

Helm said that while Microsoft had done a "pretty good job" on documenting known issues, the company could make technical and migration consultation available under its SA volume-licensing-related program.

"It has a program where customers who are on SA can get consulting time and the consulting time is generally about evaluating Office 2010 and making the business case for it. Some of that time might be better spent evaluating the customer's existing environment and helping make the move," Helm said. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like