MS Office side by side installation

Question

Is there any way to have MS Office XP and MS Office 2007 installed at the same time? I need to keep Office XP to ensure that everything I do is backwards compatible, but at the same time I have to start developing some things in Access 2007, and these files can not be loaded in Office XP.

So, is it possible to install Office 2007 without overwriting Office XP? Or, is it possible to just install Access 2007, which would also work alright for my purposes?

Answer 1

Yes it's possible. When installing Office 2007, you will need to choose custom settings and there is a checkbox that will say something along the lines of "Do not uninstall previous versions of Office" - make sure this is checked. There are some slight issues with side-by-side installs and Microsoft has documented the fixes here.

I'd also recommend grabbing the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack so you can save in the 2007 format from Office XP (applies to Word, Excel, And PowerPoint only unfortunately).

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.