Microsoft® Office 2010 Windows® XP Compatibility

Do you want to know about the compatibility of Microsoft Office 2010 with a Windows XP-based operating system?

Microsoft Office 2010 has a host of user-friendly features and tools that adds up to the comfort and benefit for a user. It is for the first time that Microsoft has launched the 64-bit version of the Microsoft Office 2010 suite with the standard 32-bit version. Although there are a few errors that have been reported widely after the release of the beta version, these errors are nonetheless not related with any compatibility issue. All the previously released operating systems of Microsoft including Windows 7/2000/ME are compatible with Microsoft Office 2010.

Here we will discuss the compatibility of Microsoft Office 2010 with Windows XP-based operating systems.

• Compatibility of Windows XP
• Issues related to compatibility
• Not compatible with

Compatibility of Windows XP

Compatibility is defined in terms of how friendly an application or software is when it is used regularly. Also, how it performs while other applications are simultaneously run play an important role in defining the compatibility of the software. The data back-up and retrieval features also play defining factors. One common reason that gives rise to compatibility testing is to check if the new software still runs old software files on it. If you or your organization isn’t planning a system upgrade anytime soon, you will have to make sure that there will be no data sources clashing. Microsoft Office 2010 has the ability to open all the previous files related to older versions of Microsoft Office such as Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2003. However, for the purpose of opening data files related to Microsoft Office 2003, a patch is needed to be downloaded from the official website of Microsoft to resolve this issue.

Issues related to compatibility

On general terms, there hasn’t been any instance of incompatibility that has been reported. The Microsoft Office 2010 application has been fully tested and found to be operating well on all the versions of Windows XP. The Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Edition are capable of running Microsoft Office 2010 without any conflict. Furthermore, there shouldn’t be a problem while running multiple applications at the same time as Windows XP can easily handle different applications running simultaneously on Microsoft Office 2010.

Not compatible with

Microsoft has clearly stated that the 64-bit version of Windows XP will not be able to run with Microsoft Office 2010 and would not be capable to run both 32-bit version and 64-bit version of Microsoft Office 2010. There are no such official statements, as of now, regarding Microsoft working on resolving this issue. There are no other issues in Microsoft Office 2010 with Windows XP except with the above-mentioned versions. The patches available for older versions of Microsoft Office namely Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 are available on the official website of Microsoft. You can have these patches installed so that old file versions can be opened in Microsoft Office 2010 without any problem.

If you are a Windows XP user and are contemplating trying out Microsoft Office 2010, here is your chance to do so. Just keep this article handy when you actually sit down to get the productivity suite installed on your Windows XP PC.