Today, I am working on a scoping document on SharePoint 2007 Intranet re-development project for a client who has Office 2003 as part of the Standard Operating Environment (SOE). I found myself wandering in Google for some information on how SharePoint 2007 integrates with Office 2003. It looks like there isn’t much information on listing various integration options. But I found the “Fair, Good, Better, Best” white paper very helpful in understanding various integration options with different office versions.
The increasing levels of functional capabilities have been deemed “fair” for Office 2000, “good” for Office XP, “better” for the Office 2003 Editions, and “best” for the 2007 Office Suites in terms of how they work together with SharePoint.In a nut shell;
| Feature | Office 2000 | Office XP | Office 2003 Editions |
| Save and open files from SharePoint sites | Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Word) | Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Visio, Word) | Enhanced (Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Publisher, Visio, Word) |
| Create new documents in Web browser | No | Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Word) | Yes (Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Publisher, Word) |
| Collect metadata automatically | No | No | Enhanced (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) |
| Promote and demote file properties and metadata automatically | Data stored, but not displayed (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Word) | Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Word) | Enhanced (Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, PowerPoint, Visio, Word) |
| Track document versions | No. Use Web browser to view and manage document versions. | No. Use Web browser to view and manage document versions. | Enhanced (Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Word) |
| Check-out and check-in documents | No. Use Web browser to manually check-out and check-in documents. | No. Use Web browser to manually check-out and check-in documents. | Enhanced (Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Word). Use Web browser to manually check-out and check-in other types of documents. |
| Manage Microsoft Project documents, risks, and issues | No | No | Yes |
| Upload multiple documents | No | No | Yes |
| Inline discussions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft Office Components for SharePoint | No | No | Yes |
| Person Names Smart Tag | No | No | Yes |
| Integration with Microsoft Business Solutions | No | No | Yes |
Download the white paper here.
Posted by SharePoint, SharePoint and stuff : SharePoint Kaffeetasse 42 on January 24, 2008 at 8:45 pm
[...] SharePoint 2007 integration options with Various Microsoft Office versions [...]
Posted by Ross on January 25, 2008 at 12:51 am
I’m glad somebody is compiling this information! To be honest I was very surprised at how well Office 2003 integrates with Sharepoint 2007. I had been told lot’s of stories about how we would need to upgrade to Office 2007 to make it worthwhile (including stories from Microsoft themselves), and yet the integration works fine. It was like black magic to see our Office 2003 applications suddenly start showing Sharepoint options once the MOSS servers were switched on.
Posted by Dan on February 19, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Have you noticed different levels of integration depending upon the Service Packs of Office 2003? For example, we have a user with SP1 that can’t check an Office document in to a Sharepoint 2007 Library directly from the Office application. She can only do it from the web browser.
Thanks
Posted by Jag on February 20, 2008 at 1:22 am
I haven’t noticed that there are different levels of intergration depending upon the service packs of office 2003. I will research into this issue and will post the findings.
Thanks for sharing this with me.
Jag
Posted by Mits on March 5, 2008 at 11:18 am
Thanks for this, have been looking for information on integrating MOSS with older versions of Office for a while now!
Do you have any idea if MOSS works with MS Project Server 2003? If so, are there any known issues/bugs that I need to know about?
Our client is looking into upgrading to MOSS but not the latest version of Project Server.
Cheers
Posted by Jag on March 6, 2008 at 5:03 am
I am very novice when it comes to EPM.
MOSS does not support PS 2003. You have to upgrade to PS 2007.
I know it hurts!
Posted by Alan on April 4, 2008 at 3:01 am
In the document it does not break down the feature comparison of Office 2003 Standard and Office 2003 Enterprise. The ‘Edit in Datasheet’ feature, which does not work with Office 2003 Standard is not even mentioned. I had a client this week go crazy after spending all this money on their MOSS implementation, only to find out that Edit in Datasheet still doesn’t work for them (because they have Office 2003 Standard Edition). It would be great if you could add this (and anything else that appears broken to a user) to the document.
Posted by Patty Dejkriengkarikul on December 30, 2008 at 4:18 am
Our company use MSOffice2003 also but it workin with
“Edit in DataSheet” , Do you have IE 6 or IE 7? IE6 will not work, try IE 7!