Office 2010 – differences based on the OS and any problems seen

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I work for an FDA regulated company and we have a number of systems that use Excel which are under regulatory control. When we change anything associated with the apps, we have to do a risk assessment and then decide what to test and how.

Our use of Excel falls into two broad categories:
1. Direct use of Excel spreadsheets that include formulas and/or macros.
2. Indirect use of Excel by other apps; for instance, I have some Notes apps that export data to Excel using LotusScript code that talks to the Excel OLE/COM elements to generate the Excel files.

At a high level, I’m interested if Office 2010 is the same when run on XP and Win 7 (assumes we’re using the same bit-idness version on both OS’s). If I looked at the files that make up Office 2010 on each OS, will I find the same stuff (dll/exe/etc) or are they unique to the OS?

For anyone who’s made the OS switch, did you see any differences in the way the Office suites perform based on the OS? Did you have to rebuild any macros? If you use OLE/COM interfaces to Excel, did the API change?

My thanks for any responses.

doug

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Although I haven’t checked, I’d be surprised if Office installed exactly the same files on both XP and Win 7. From an end-user perspective, though, they’d function the same – the dlls may even have the same names (just different version numbers). XP may also require some files Win 7 doesn’t, and vice-versa. IIRC, Office 2010 won’t run on 64-bit XP, either. And, FWIW, MS recommends only running Office 2010 in 32-bit mode (even on a 64-bit OS) unless you need the extra clout for Excel, as various 3rd-party addins aren’t 64-bit compatible.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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That helps. I think I’ll need to treat the 2010 install as ‘new business’ which probably means a more extensive test protocol.

Doug

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