Well Margaret (P) From a Word user point of view (I only use the rest of the "suite" as needed) my personal preference (apart from the last Word BASIC version, 7 for Windows 95) is Word 9 (AKA 2000). It still has a way of working that makes some degree of sense (to a regular Word user) without the interface and new file type selection horrors that pervade later Office versions, minus the indescribably evil little link and Internet Exploder resolution "optimization" bugs of Word 2002. Plus the Word 2000 file type works with later versions and accepts their files. (Am pretty sure that this is true for the other Office tools as well.) The big advantages of Word 2000 over 97, for me, were the Web hyperlink integration and the way that this works so well with the PDFMaker macros that came with Adobe Acrobats 5 & 6. But the upgrade path is never a smooth one from any version of Word to another. Be prepared for those of your recorded macros based on using menu options and dialogs to fall in a screaming heap when they "discover" the changed menu structure, dialog options and item selection underscores. If you have to upgrade, the 2000 suite retains the greatest compatibility, functionality and usefulness, without much of the performance penalty and infuriating user interface tweaks and highly suspect new features of the later Office suite. (Apparently only PowerPoint significantly improves.) Personally, I'm on hold until and hanging on to Office 2000 until the version after Office 2006, when I hear that some of one of our more outspoken atw colleague's genius might filter into Word and we might even get some usefulness back, which has been whittled away in recent versions. Otherwise, set up an MS-DOS partition and run good old Word 5.1 for DOS. Boy, would that go like a rocket on a machine with a data-sucking CPU and some serious RAM and hard disk resources. Oh, and make sure that your new XP PC has a really high quality case. Something that works as a Faraday Cage. The latest CPUs give off enough microwave energy to cook crumpets through concrete. What a shame the MS OS and its applications are now so hungry that nothing really goes any faster, unless you are crunching files or compiling code. HTH. Cheers, Michael Granat Write Ideas At 17:44 28/2/2005, you wrote: >Can anyone offer any advice on which version of MS Office is best to use >or >avoid with Windows XP Professional? > >I am a Frame user who uses Word only under sufferance and still >prefers Word 97 over the two later versions I have used (Word 2000 and >Word 2002). > >I use Excel a bit, but I wouldn't call myself a power user. > >I am used to Outlook, but could be swayed to use another email client if >necessary. ( Having learnt to cope with Notes at work, I figure I can >master just about anything.) > >I'm not keen on more having to deal with more wierd stuff in Word >than necessary though. Having seen recent threads about various >horrible things happening with Word, I am just pondering which version >I should buy to go on a new PC, so any advice would be welcome. > > >Thanks > >Margaret Michael E. Granat Qualified Good Tech Writer Dude Fellowship Of The Ring Of Tech Writers, Yeah Baby! T/as Write Ideas E-mail: mailto:writeideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web: <http://home.pacific.net.au/~megranat/> Without Prejudice. E&OE. ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************