I have Office 2003 SP3 on one of my computers; the other computer has a "base" version of Office 2003 (not SP anything). I downloaded the SP3 upgrade from Major Geeks website. I'm sure this is a novice question but do I just run the upgrade and it "automatically" upgrades the "base" version, while keeping all of my Outlook emails and settings? Is there a way to backup the base version before I do this just in case the upgrade fails?
I also still use Office 2003 -- I need real menus, not that "ribbon" garbage, which every subsequent Office version uses.
Yes, leave Office closed and just double-click and run the SP3 executable. (FWIW, you do not need to install SP1 or SP2 first.) It just patches your existing installation, it doesn't replace it.
I would also recommend installing the Office Compatibility Pack, which will allow 2003 to read/write most current Office formats (docx, xlsx, etc.). That way, you can exchange Office documents with others using more recent Office versions.
There's no way to backup just the Office programs, but if that's what you're after you could instead create a backup image of the whole C: partition using any of the common imaging programs (Macrium Reflect, Aomei BackUpper, EasUs ToDo Backup, et al). That's a whole other topic and well covered in other threads on this forum, so we won't get into it here.
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