[t_r_davies]

Hi folks,

Been lurking here for a year or so, thought I should maybe start posting things

I'm running Office XP Pro SP3 on my Win2K Pro SP4 box, both of which are fully up-to-date with hotfixes. I originally installed Office over three years ago without Outlook, however I now want to start using it because I want something more flexible and powerful than Outlook Express.

Now it's easy enough to add Outlook by doing a "Change installation" in Add/Remove Programs, but I was wanting some advice on whether this would give me any problems, especially as I have SP3 and many hotfixes already installed. Does anyone here have any experience of doing this, and if so, did they encounter any hiccups in the process? I know I will have to use Office Update to get Outlook-related hotfixes which are not currently installed, but will I have run the SP3 installer again to let it install the Outlook parts of the service pack?

Cheers,

Tom

[felix]

Firstly welcome into the light....

Second, you should be fine so long as you re-apply SP3 after you install Outlook. Then go and do the auto-update also.

F.

[t_r_davies]

Hi Felix,

Thanks for your advice, I'll give it a try in the morning and let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

Tom

[Christianb]

Hi Tom,
I agree that in the past reapplying the service packs was necessary. However, I don't think that'll be necessary in Office 2003. Also it's my guess that if you try re-installing it it'll tell you the service pack is already installed. But yes changing the installed packages part should work fine. I just don't want to see you worrying, because you are unable to reinstall the service pack.
Cheers,
Christian Blackburn

[t_r_davies]

Hi guys,

I used Add/Remove Programs to add the Outlook components I wanted and it all seems to be working fine. As christianb said, I didn't have to reinstall SP3. Windows Installer obviously caches the MSI patch files: all of the Outlook files were automatically installed as the SP3 versions.

Cheers for the advice fellas

Tom