Office 97- can I uninstall it now?

[Rollers123]

I've Office 97....if I uninstall it now that I have OO, will there be any ramifications?

[ccornell]

Both office suites can co-exist just fine on your computer.

If you are happy with the functionality provided by OpenOffice.org, and do not have any processes (or software) that are dependent on MS Office 97, then there is probably no harm in removing it if you want to. You could always reinstall it if you needed to.

If you are using Outlook as your mail client in Windows, you will probably loose the ability to spell check your emails if you remove MS Office. There are 3rd party dictionaries that can be used in its place. Or, you can use a different email client such as Thunderbird which has built in spell check functionality.

I can't think of any other ramifications to removing MS Office.

[TerryE]

I cannot tell a lie. I have both OOo and MSO 97 on my home PC. I doubt if the average user would need anything that MSO 97 provides that OOo doesn't, but leaving it installed doesn't materially free up any runtime resources.

If I were doing a clean build, then would I put MSO 97 back on? Well I did about a year ago, because my wife is comfortable with MSO 97 and is reluctant to change. Even so it took some frigging and Internet searches to get it into install on XP. I have rashly declared that I will not put Vista on any of my home PCs, so I do 't know about that one. As to OOo, it is becoming installable almost anywhere -- as long as you have the right kit.

[RonIA]

Depends on if MSO97 is associated with .doc and .xls files.

If so, after uninstall, double-click a .doc / /xls file and choose OpenOffice.org to open it, (make sure you select "always use this application to open this file type" or words to that effect).