Does anyone know the upgrade requirements for Office 2001 for sure?

The situation I have is that I have a legal site-licensed copy of Office 98 on my Mac that I got from work. I nthe past some M$ upgrades would not work if the copy being upgraded was site-licensed as opposed to retail.

The other possibility I have is that I have a retail version of Office 2000 on a Windows box. Can I sidegrade? Deneba allows this with Canvas, but I don't know about M$.

I would hate to plunk down $300 for the upgrade, which would be non-returnable, only to find out it didn't work.

On the other hand why spend $500 for a full version if an upgrade would work?

Dave Leary

When I bought my iMac and my PC had a copy of Office 97Pro OEM also I had a retail copy of Office 95 laying around I called Microsoft for a slide platform upgrade option and they never heard of it even though I read about it on Apple's Tech Exchange Board from others who done it, I later caved and had to get Office 2000 for the PC as M$ wouldn't budge and no one would listen.
As for other companies I've dealed with here are some who will do cross platform upgrades and or rebates from buying their Mac OS version if you owned a PC edition:
Symantec: I called them and I was able to upgrade to NU 5 and NAV 6 and got my rebate by faxing them a copy of the PC editions old user manual's front and inside pages.
File Maker Pro: formerly known as Claris, I was able to upgrade by buying a full retail edition and called them and got a rebate/refund after mailing and faxing a copy of my M$ front page from the users manual and copy of my CD..... M$ if your competers act this nicely since you don't have access for MacOS for unknown reasons you shot yourself in the foot, and FM also said I could order the Win9x version too at a disconted price so I also got a Win9x copy two days later(bye bye M$ for database!)
Nisus Software: I heard from other friends who called them over Win converts to MacOS and they've done it before, not sure if they still do. Nisus Writer is powerful and better than M$ Word, I'm planning to call them in a few days so I can get a usable wordprocessor as Corel's WP is a bit dated and a some features I need are either incomplete or not there.
Grolier Encyclopedia: I've heard from friends they used to do crossgrades by allowing you to get a rebate on new versions, since I haven't seen their products in stores are they still around?
Sierra: Only product I heard can be crossgraded is PrintArtist 4 users to the newer/advanced packages. I didn't have to do this upgrade as when I got Win98 for my PC the store bundled Printartist 4 Plat so I got both Win9x and MacOS editions :-)
There are a few others but I don't remember their names, and yes there are other companies out there who offer just as good or even better products than Microsoft, if they don't offer the crossgrade or never heard of it then don't deal with them. M$ has lost all business from myself and my business, bye bye M$ :-)

PS: I feel bad for the MacTopia/Mac personal at M$, the sales/upgrade dept doesn't know anything about their Mac products, forcing users to not use Mac Office.

[Balthisar]

I *don't* know if the applies to the new Office 2001 for Mac, *but* when I bought the Office 98 "upgrade", I had *no* problem installing it *clean* onto my then-new Performa 6400. With the drag-and-drop install from CD-ROM, it didn't even check for the existence of an older version.

And *yes* I did legally own the full version of Office 6 when I bought the upgrade.

For those who don't know, then Windows versions ("ugrade" vs "new") are identical. Depending on the S/N you type in, the installer checks to see if previous versions are present. I *never* want to be unable to do a clean install of any product.

[ddukes]

Balthisar is right. Neither the full or upgrade versions of Office 2000 or 2001 check for anything. They both have the same installer, if you want to call it an installer--just drag the Office icon over to your hard drive and that's it!

M$ has made the installer independant of the older version so that installation is user-friendlier. The presence of a valid upgradepath is the users responsibility.

What M$ could do better is inform us about the upgradepath. Does anyone know the upgrade requirements for Office 2001? Is office 4.2 enough?

qliq

------------------
qliq.internet-
technologies
www.qliq.it