Office 2000 to Office 2003 upgrade

[byGeorge]

I am looking at buying a new WM 3G smartphone. Most new Windows models use Windows Mobile 6 which starts a cascade of application upgrade needs. You have to go to activesync 4.5 from 4.2 and then Outlook 2000 is no longer supported which has been my rock solid 8 year old office solution. I have read enough to know to stay away from Office 2007 so it looks like a migration to Office 2003 would be in order. 2 questions:

Any comments on the stability of Office 2003 vs 2000, or on problems with unistalling 2000 and installing 2003 Pro (full version)? I normally accumulate updated application versions for my yearly fresh OS install to avoid corruption/instability problems but I just finished this process for 2008.

Once I open any documents or Outlook .pst files in Office 2003, does that make then unuseable in Office 2000 if I decide to go back?

Thanks,

[Cogar]

Office 2003 is pretty much backward-compatible with Office 2000--at least the common documents and files are (.doc, .xls, etc.). I am not familiar with .pst, so someone else will have to give you that answer. One exception would be Microsoft Access files, which may not be backward compatible. (I recall that the files cannot even be converted, but it has been long enough I am not sure if the deal-breaking change was between the version before or after Office 2000.) Stability of Office 2003 is fine. Although you did not ask, the UI is also pretty much the same, so the learning curve should be shallow. Good luck in any case.

[byGeorge]

Acording to the Microsoft knowledge base, Outlook 2000 .pst files can be converted to the new file format by importing/translating them into Outlook 2003 but then they will not be useable by an Outlook 2000 machine unless imported/translated back. Further reading suggests that .pst Outlook 2000 files can be read by Outlook 2003 by just moving them into the Outlook 2003 directory, they just won't be in Unicode format and have greater than 2Gig capacity. In this scenario, is the file format unchanged after new activity occurs in the 2003 .pst file, can the .pst file be moved back to an Outlook 2000 based machine without issue (or importing/conversion)? I will only be upgrading one machine to Outlook 2003 but I routinely move my .pst files across 3 other Outlook 2000 based installs as I change working location which is frequently. Up until now that process has gone smoothly but all Outlook programs have been the same revision (2000).

Thanks,

[blt_abx]

Normal Office documents shouldn't be a problem.
We have Office 2000 and 2003 at my office and share documents constantly without problems.

The Outlook ,pst file is another story however.
OL2003 can read and import an OL2000 .pst.
OL2000 can not read or import a "standard OL2003 .pst file.
Going from 2003 back to 2000 is a PIA.
You will have to convert the OL2003 .pst file into the format supported by OL2000.
See this link:
The .pst file has a different format and folder size limit in Outlook 2007 and in Outlook 2003

[byGeorge]

Thanks on the document answer.

I understand the issue if Outlook 2003 converts the pst file from OL2000 ANSI to OL2003 UNICODE as a reverse translation back to ANSI would be required to make the pst file useable by OL2000 again. All of this importing and translating file types would eventually risk a meltdown. My question is actually what happens if you leave the pst file as an ANSI format when it goes to OL2003 by just dragging and dropping it into the OL2003 directory without import/translation to UNICODE format. What happens now when this roaming pst file is exchanged between OL2000 and OL2003 ad nauseum, am I asking for trouble? I have been doing this "synchronizing" routinely across mutiple OL2000 based computers for many years without a single issue. Will my "black sheep" OL 2003 machine mess up my game plan?

Thanks,

[blt_abx]

OL2003 was designed for it's default .pst file to be in UNICODE format.
I have not tried setting up OL2003 with a default .pst file in ANSI format.
I suspect OL2003 would attempt writing any new data in UNICODE format resulting in corruption of the ANSI format .pst file.

You may be stuck with converting back and forth between UNICODE and ANSI formats in order to "sync" the .pst file with your other machines.

[securase]

You can use the PSTUPGRADE tool from pstupgrade.com

Which allows you to convert Outlook 2000 PST to Outlook 2003 PST
and also allows you to downgrade Outlook 2003 PST to Outlook 2000 PST file.

Good tool we are using it for all our company users.