Office 2013 from 2007 = Crash

MSchild · 25 Oct 2013

Starting with Office 2007 Enterprise x86, going to Office 2013 Standard x64, no matter which way I try to go about it always ends in every Office application crashing (Ex: MS Word has stopped working..) as soon as it is opened.

I cannot use the "upgrade" feature during 2013 installation as it will not install Office products of different architectures side by side, so my only option is to uninstall 2007 and install 2013, which produces the crash. I have searched for a MS documented 'best practice' or recommended method of achieving this to no avail.. also looked for a MS removal tool for 2007 but came up empty.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

If you have information on a MS best procedure or a MS removal tool, please let me know! Any other suggestions such as a manual technique would be very much appreciated as well.

MSchild · 25 Oct 2013

Found a KB article:

How to uninstall or remove Microsoft Office 2007 suites

Had uninstalled 2007 and used the Fixit tool with no luck once, then reinstalled Windows 7 and repeated the process of:

Code:

Install Office 2007 Enterprise x86
Reboot
Uninstall Office 2007 Enterprise x86
Reboot
Run Fixit Tool
Reboot
Installed Office 2013 Standard x64
Reboot

And all seems to be working well now. Tested once with a Windows 7 x64 SP1 install with no driver or OS updates. I am going to repeat the entire process once to be sure it's reliable, as I did essentially the same exact thing before reinstalling the OS, but just wanted to post what I'd found so far for the community. Will mark as solved if all goes well on try #2.

Ranger4 · 25 Oct 2013

If you continue having problems try installing Office 2013 x86 instead. As far as I know the 32 bit & 64 bit versions of Office cannot be run on the one computer at the same time.
Unless you have some very large spreadsheets or other reasons Microsoft recommend that you install the 32 bit version as it has features that are not able to be used with the 64 bit version such as Active X & a few other things.
I use the 32 bit version of Office 2103 Pro on my 64 bit computer & it works perfectly.

jimbo45 · 26 Oct 2013

Hi there
That warning about the 32 bit vs the 64 bit is now over - the 64 bit version is fine too. However I have a load of EXCEL addins that don't work in the 64 bit version so I'm sticking with the 32 bit release.

Incidentally I (and a load of other) prefer Office 2010 to Office 2013 -- I'd recommend you look at that instead --it also works more or less identically to Office 2007 too.

For probably most people who use Ms office there isn't any specific need to use the 64 bit version - although running a 64 bit version on a 64 bit machine in theory makes more sense as you don't need the overhead of WOW -- Windows on Windows for running windows 32 bit applications.

Cheers
jimbo

MSchild · 29 Oct 2013

Hey, sorry for not posting back sooner.

That did work for me consistently and is now the method I will use when upgrading Office installations.
I do agree that most of the time x86 software is preferable (most x64 cpus don't even have a full 64-bit fsb anyways), I just wanted to find a way to make it work in either scenario. Thanks for the input guys!

HiTechCoach · 01 Nov 2013

If I need both 32-bit and 64-bit installed on the same machine I I installed one in a VM. The least used one goes in the VM.