When is a good time to upgrade your Microsoft Office products?

Some of you  might be using very old Office products, such as Office 2003 or Office 2007. While they still might work fine, you need to be alerted of some problems that can happen when using old outdated software.

I will be discussing Outlook as the general functions for Word, Excel and PowerPoint still work fine, no matter what version you have.

Here is what I tell clients when they ask me if they should upgrade their Office products (Outlook)

• If your Office products won’t allow you to do what you need or want, it’s time to upgrade.
• If it won’t install correctly, it’s time to upgrade
• If you need more than one Microsoft Exchange account setup. Old Outlook 2007 only allowed on Microsoft Exchange account per profile to be configured, now you can have way more. I don’t even know the limits, but let’s just say….if you have many, the new Outlook 2013/Outlook 2016 can carry it.
• If you have Outlook 2003 and/or Outlook 2007, you will need to upgrade if you buy a new Windows 8 or Windows 10 computer.
• 3rd party software is breaking (iCloud for example)
• You will need to upgrade if your PST created in old Outlook versions has limits or are corrupting due to over usage or size
  • PST file sizes: Used to be very small, Outlook 2003 had only a 2 gig limit and back then, we didn’t barely use it because we didn’t get as much mail as we do now, nor the attachment issues/sizes. Keep in mind, if you have a PST created back in old Outlook 2003, you might need to make a new one if you are using new Outlook products, I have seen issues! PST’s breaking and corrupting due to enormous amounts of email.

Most of the time I recommend an upgrade is because people have large PST files and or need to upgrade to fix 3rd party software. The speed of Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016 is awesome. If your Outlook is lagging, upgrading is a great idea.

Updating is pretty easy and should not require a backup of data, but again…you never know. I tell everyone to always backup prior to any upgrade, just in case!!!

If you need help buying the right products and installing Office, just find time on my calendar below. I can definitely help! There are so many products out there these days, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out if you should buy it out right or subscribe.