Office Upgrade

You don't need to suspend the Microsoft Security. Years ago it was standard to stop antivirus and other programs as they would interfere. Not the case, usually, now.

Uninstalling Office 2003 (I still have it on my Win 7 system) should not delete files in My Documents. I guess you can back them up just in case.

When I upgraded my Win 8.1 to Win 10, I uninstalled Office 2003 and it did not delete any of my documents associated with MS Office.

I installed the free Libre Office, which is compatible to MS Office and what I use with Win 10 and it will export as a PDF.
Home | LibreOffice - Free Office Suite - Fun Project - Fantastic People

Be careful of buying software on ebay, it often has very doubtful origins & can be pirated copies or a copy that is already in use. You may have problems getting it activated if it is.

Good luck & get back if you have any problems.

Selecting an Office program is difficult these days, unless you know exactly what you want.

MS Office Pro has features the others don't have & it includes Access which is their database program.
Office 365 is a subscription type program & you pay a certain monthly fee, depending on what options you have selected.
Office Home & Business is fairly self describing & is intended for small business owners who want & use if for home use as well.
Office Home & Student is also fairly self descriptive.

Have a look at a Microsoft Office website & read through all the versions & work out which one goes closest to your needs, then check out their prices & then see if some of your local stores carry it & at what price. You can download Office direct from MS after providing a means to pay for it.

From what you have said it seems that you will need Excel & Word mainly, but as you have Office 2003, you should also know what other programs you require.

As fireberd has suggested you should be able to uninstall office 2003 without losing existing created files, but certainly back them up first.
You will need to convert Office 2003 files to the new version of Office as the file dot suffix has changed.

I would go for Libre Office. It is free and can do everything that Windows Office does.

kodakjack said:

... I would like to be able to deal with docx. xlsx, PDF's back and forth, etc. Besides that, Office 2003 isn't supported anymore. Any suggestions are appreciated.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you want to deal with these types of files "back and forth". Whether you choose Office or LibreOffice, they work about the same. For instance both can save or publish a document as a pdf but you won't be able to edit that pdf. That's not really a big deal since you can edit the original document and then save it again as a pdf.

Either can read or write your old .doc files that were created with Office 2003. You will not need to convert those files in any way. As long as you keep them as .doc files then they will still be usable with Office 2003. It's the same with .xls files.

Both can work with the newer .docx or .xlsx files as well. LibreOffice has it's own file formats as well but you don't need to use those formats if you wish to maintain the ability to exchange files with other Office users.

I have successfully purchased software from Ebay but you need to make sure you buy only from those sellers with very high feedback ratings.

Personally, if I didn't already have Office, I would use LibreOffice.

That is a good summary of the situation. The only few Libre Office restrictions I am aware of are in the PowerPoint/Impress area.