Office 2003 problems

[cdgoldin]

I kept a copy of the wsusoffline-9.21 client folder which contains o2k3 and ofc folders with the final update of Office 2003, specifically so I could reinstall and update Office 2003 at a later date. But when I run the 9.21 updateinstaller.exe with W10, it says that "this version of windows is not supported", and when I run the current updateinstaller.exe, it says there are no updates for the installed office product (even though I have 2003 installed and running under W10). So...

1) Is there a way around this using WSUSOU? If not ...

2) Can I just run the .exe files in the o2k3 enu and glb folders?

3) Do i need to also expand and run the .cab files in the ofc enu and glb folders?

4) What is the difference between o2k3 and ofc and between enu and glb?

[Dalai]

1) Is there a way around this using WSUSOU? If not ...

It should be possibe to just run .\client\Update.cmd to launch WSUS Offline instead of UpdateInstaller; I've never used the latter myself.

2) Can I just run the .exe files in the o2k3 enu and glb folders?

Theoretically yes, but I don't think you want to go through the hassle of finding out which update is applicable to your installation...

3) Do i need to also expand and run the .cab files in the ofc enu and glb folders?

Yes, but see point 2.

4) What is the difference between o2k3 and ofc and between enu and glb?

glb (global) contains updates which are not language-dependent in any way, are applicable to applications/components regardless of their language. ofc contains all updates that are independent from the MS Office version, they usually contain common components that are used across all MS Office versions. o2k3 contains only updates for Office 2003.

Regards
Dalai

[boco]

The problem is that the WSUSOU 9.2.1 script does not know Windows 10. The OS is checked even for pure Office media.

Later scripts do know Windows 10, but do not know Office 2003. Kind of a catch22.


You'd need to backport the routines for recognizing Windows 10 from the new to the old script. Then it would work fine.

[cdgoldin]

It should be possibe to just run .\client\Update.cmd to launch WSUS Offline instead of UpdateInstaller; I've never used the latter myself.

Update.cmd results in the same error as updateinstaller.exe:

With 9.2.1 - ERROR: Unsupported Operating System ()
With 10.7.4 - ERROR: Medium neither supports your Windows (w100 x64 enu) nor your Office version.

Can I just run the .exe files in the o2k3 enu and glb folders...?

Theoretically yes, but I don't think you want to go through the hassle of finding out which update is applicable to your installation...

Then how else can I do it? Won't the update initialization tell me that the update is inapplicable? If so, I can automate it as follows:

cd /d .\client\o2k3\enu
for %%f in (%~dp0*.exe) do echo %%f & %%f /Z /U
cd /d .\client\o2k3\glb
for %%f in (%~dp0*.exe) do echo %%f & %%f /Z /U
...

[cdgoldin]

You'd need to backport the routines for recognizing Windows 10 from the new to the old script. Then it would work fine.

So where do I find the old and new scripts, so I can modify them?

[Dalai]

So where do I find the old and new scripts, so I can modify them?

They're all in the .\client\cmd directory. Note that you need some knowledge in batch scripting (I don't call it programming, but that's just me) to modify them appropriately.

Regards
Dalai

[WSUSUpdateAdmin]

Hi.

What are we talking about here?

You shouldn't run Office 2003 at all, since Microsoft discontinued support for it on April 8th, 2014 (see http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2488)!

Cheers,
Torsten

[cdgoldin]

You shouldn't run Office 2003 at all, since Microsoft discontinued support for it on April 8th, 2014

Why not? It works fine. In fact it works better than subsequent versions. So does Office 2000, but it doesn't run on Windows 7 or Windows 10. Microsoft "support" occasionally fixes a few bugs (and adds a few), but has no other value.

[aker]

o2k3 isn't safe anymore. Even with the most recent updates available for it (2014-04).

[Dalai]

Well, it depends on the files you use in your Office suite. I primarily create my own files, sometimes I open files I get from someone else (people I trust). So in my case I'm safe with any older Office. I'm using MS Office 2000, which runs fine on Win7 by the way (despite the nonsense message you get from the system).

The situation gets different if you often get Office files from (unknown) people, security and update support is a far more important factor than in my use case above. In other words: you shouldn't use older unsupported Office programs in such cases.

So, in short: it depends on the use case if its safe to use older (unsupported) Office programs.

Regards
Dalai