Problem with Microsoft Office 97 Professional loaded in Vista Windows

[hjrouch]

I recently purchased Microsoft Office 97 Professional Edition on ebay and loaded it on my Del laptop which is running Windows 7 Vista. This system had Microsoft Word and Excel 2010 Starter installed.

Word 97 worked perfectly but when I saved a file in Excel 97 it reverted to Excel 2010 Starter.

I next unloaded Microsoft Word and Excel 2010 Starter using the Control Panel.
Now, when I try to open an Excel file, I get this message: “There was a problem sending the command to the program”. When I try to open a Word file, I get this message: “Click-2-Run configuration failure.”

I restored C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14
Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010 (Protected) (Q is in the Recycle Bin. When I try to open it I get “Location is not available”

I can open Excel and Word 97 from All Programs in Start, and open an existing program. I can then print it or change it and resave it.

What can I do to get Excel files to open?

 

[Mark Phelps]

You might not be able to get it working.

Found the following information about compatibility of Office 97 with Windows 7 on answers.microsoft.com:

I'm sorry you are experiencing problems with your Office product and printers.
Office 97 is not compatible with Windows 7. It is a 13 year old product and is no longer supported by Microsoft as it has gone out of Life Cycle Support.

• Office 97 – Assisted support options for Office 97 ended on January 16, 2004. Mainstream hotfix support for Office 97 ended on August 31, 2001. Extended hotfix support ended on February 28, 2002. Self-help online support will be available for at least one year after assisted support concludes.

See: http://support.microsoft.com/qp/lifeoffice

You may be able to get it to work in Compatibility mode but I cannot guarantee it. Office 2003 and Office 2007 are both compatible with Windows 7. If you still want Windows XP, you may be able to search on the internet for available media. I don't know if you will be able to find it. Some netbooks are being built with Windows XP as an operating system, you might try a netbook but it does have some limitations.

 

[Ranger4]

As suggested by Mark Phelps you are probably setting yourself up for a multitude of problems trying to get Office 97 to work.
The best solution is to uninstall Office 97 & use Office 2010 only.