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

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.

Hi Felix,

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

Cheers,

Tom

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

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