Microsoft Access and Windows 7-Will It Work?

macman

I'm advising a friend on upgrading an old PC running XP. to W7. She is using MS Office XP Professional at present, and in particular MS Access, which is part of that program.
If she upgrades to W7, will it run MS Office XP (including Access)? According to Wikpedia, this edn is supported under W7. However, assuming that W7 is 64 bit, (and XP Professional is 32 bit) isn't this an issue? Would she have to use the 32 bit version of W7?
Alternatively, if she upgrades to MS Office 2010 Professional (which includes Access), would the data from the old XP edn be importable without issues into the new edition?

rmg1

In answer to your second question, yes.
If she installs Office 2010, it will automatically pick up the files from the older version (it did when I upgraded).

If she does go down that route, Office 2010 has the ribbon format instead of toolbars for file/edit/etc so it may take a bit of getting used to.

macman

Thanks. Alternatively, is there an alternative database program that can be recommended to run under W7, and that will import the data from Access OK?
I'm still unclear about the 32/64 bit issue?

rmg1

You could try Open Office/LibreOffice (can't remember which one is still in development.
As for the 32/64 bit issue, you can run a 32bit program on windows 64bit (which is what I'm currently doing) but not the other way round.

macman

So the best solution is probably to do a reinstall of the XP edn onto W7, (32 or 64 bit version).

John_Gray

Microsoft actually recommends running the 32-bit version of Office under 64-bit Windows!

rmg1

macman wrote: »

So the best solution is probably to do a reinstall of the XP edn onto W7, (32 or 64 bit version).

You could do, or you could upgrade at the same time.

david39

Why don't you just try Access on the new operating system and then, if it doesn't work, worry about it then - at worst, you will have to un-install it and get a later version of Office - at best, it will work.

Also, if it doesn't install, try installing it under Compatability Mode for Windows XP. You'll find instructions for how to do this in your Help files or by Googling.

macman

The issue is that said friend doesn't want to commit to upgrading her PC to W7 unless I can reassure her that she can use her existing database in Access. Catch 22...

ITExpert

macman wrote: »

I'm advising a friend on upgrading an old PC running XP. to W7. She is using MS Office XP Professional at present, and in particular MS Access, which is part of that program.
If she upgrades to W7, will it run MS Office XP (including Access)? According to Wikpedia, this edn is supported under W7. However, assuming that W7 is 64 bit, (and XP Professional is 32 bit) isn't this an issue? Would she have to use the 32 bit version of W7?
Alternatively, if she upgrades to MS Office 2010 Professional (which includes Access), would the data from the old XP edn be importable without issues into the new edition?

Not an issue - Access XP will work fine under Windows 7 (google for Windows VirtualPC and Windows XP compatibility), but upgrading her databases to Office 2010 is not advised! Something always breaks with MS Office upgrades.

GunJack

ITExpert wrote: »

Something always breaks with MS Office upgrades.

:rotfl: oh, how true is that ?!?!?!?!?!?! try Spot-on