Outlook 97 on Win 8?

I think that I know the answer to this question but I'll ask anyway......

It's a long story and I won't bore you but I'm still using MS Office 97. I have also bought a new computer that has Win 8 Pro. I installed Office 97 and everything works except Outlook. I've searched but can't find a way to make it work on Win 8.

On previous and other computers I'm using either Outlook or Outlook Express and like both.

Since neither Outlook Express or Outlook 97 will work on Win 8, I'm currently using Thunderbird. It's OK but I really prefer either Outlook or Outlook Express.

It's been suggested that I pirate Outlook 2010 but I really don't want to do that.

Has anyone found a way to make Outlook 97 work on Windows 8 Pro?

from what i read ,never tried office 97 on win8 myself .you will need at least office 2010, to use outlook on win8

caperjack said:

from what i read ,never tried office 97 on win8 myself .you will need at least office 2010, to use outlook on win8

Click to expand...

Yes. That's what I've read too.

I'm hoping that someone may have found a way around this. I don't really want to spend mega bucks on MS Office 2010 or 2013 when Office 97 meets my needs better than the newer versions (except Outlook).

I'm using Office/Outlook 2003, but its not supposed to be compatible according to MS. I'm getting security updates for 2003.

MS and several other security agencies have put out several bulletins about Outlook 97 being insecure and shouldn't be used.

I had Outlook Express on my old XP laptop & contacted my ISP supplier which happens to be Virgin, & they opened up Outlook on the phone for me by remote control. If you click on the People app, open the Charmsbar>Settings>Accounts>Add an account, select Outlook & fill in the details that will help you on your way, because People is tied in with your email account.
You can transfer all your email address contacts, documents, music, photos, etc. by using the Windows Easy Transfer app. All of these went into my File Explorer on the Desktop.

Hi there
Have you thought of using a Virtual Machine with an older OS such as Windows 2000.

Outlook will work -- or you could even use Outlook Express. I'd go for installing XP as a VM. You don't need much resources to having an XP virtual machine - especially if you are only using it for email.

I'm not sure I'd pay too much attention to E-mail being insecure -- PROVIDED you DON'T OPEN ANY EMAIL from people you don't know, NEVER click on Links in emails and never open attachments unless you know what's in them.

Here's a pic of Windows 98 running as a VM on Windows 8 x-64. I only allocated a teeny 256MB RAM to this VM. Outlook express still works on this machine (was just testing). XP should be fine as a VM.

@robinpe -- I think the OP's problem was that he couldn't make OUTLOOK work -- not a problem of transferring / copying email accounts / settings etc.

Cheers
jimbo

I've almost found a solution.

I have a friend that switched from Windows to a Mac on his last upgrade. He gave me his copy of Office 2007. I installed it and made Excel 2007 unavailable so that I could use Excel 97.

Everything works except.....
When I open Excel 97, I get the error message "One of your object Libraries (stdole2.tlb) is missing or damaged. Please run setup to install it." It didn't do this prior to installing Office 2007.


I click "OK" and other than opening full screen rather than in a normal window, Excel 97 seems to run perfectly.


I searched for "stdole2.tlb" and found it in 4 locations. The date on the file is "July 25, 2012". I checked another computer that is running Excel 97 and Win XP and the date of its "stdole2.tlb" file is Aug 4, 2004.


I'm tempted to uninstall Office 97 and just re install Excel 97 but I doubt that this will work since the "stdole2.tlb" date doesn't seem to be related to either version of Office.


Can anyone suggest a solution?

I have a friend that switched from Windows to a Mac on his last upgrade. He gave me his copy of Office 2007. I installed it and made Excel 2007 unavailable so that I could use Excel 97.

Click to expand...

Dont resist ! Why to use a 15 years old software when you got a copy for free from your friend.

vrosa said:

I have a friend that switched from Windows to a Mac on his last upgrade. He gave me his copy of Office 2007. I installed it and made Excel 2007 unavailable so that I could use Excel 97.

Click to expand...

Dont resist ! Why to use a 15 years old software when you got a copy for free from your friend.

Click to expand...

Why use 15 year old software....
I have a number of mission critical macros that were originally written in Lotus 123. They were subsequently adapted to Excel 95 (subsequently Excel 97) still using the Lotus "/" command structure. I continued to use the Lotus macro language because the Excel macro language doesn't have a command that allows the macro to pause in a specific cell and await user input, then continue execution. Excel 2000 ended support for the Lotus macro language. Therefore, I continued to use Excel 97. I actually bought Office 2000 and discovered this shortcoming. (Not a happy camper!)

I have subsequently explored alternatives and found none better than remaining with Excel 97.

In case anyone else is having this issue, I solved my problem....

I uninstalled Office 97 and re-installed Excel 97 only.

Excel 97 then worked perfectly but after that every time I opened Word 2007 I got a "Configuration Process" window and a progress bar that lasted for about 30 seconds. Then Word operated correctly.

This was corrected by adding the following to the registry:
reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Now all is working perfectly.

Thanks to Aravinda Balakrishna at "answers.microsoft.com"