Microsoft Office 2007 Installation Woes

I work in the IT department of a fairly large local government entity that has several hundred computers in use. On those machines, about 90% of them use Microsoft Office software. We've had so many requests for the new Office 2007 that we decided to start upgrading everyone. They all had previously been using Microsoft Office 2003. Before that, they were using either Office XP or Office 2000. Since we began the upgrade process, our department has encountered a myriad of technical problems.

At first, our goal was to push out Office 2007 using SMS, or Systems Management Server, which is a network tool made by Microsoft. It is used for remotely deploying software so that people like me don't have to physically travel to each computer whenever we decide to update everyone. I'll admit that we had to jump a few hurdles to get SMS working, but that's because none of us had any experience with it before. After getting past that part, we quickly realized that the problem was with Office 2007.

I've worked in the computer industry for ten years now, and one thing I have learned is that Microsoft products are best when you install them fresh. When you upgrade from a previous version, it tends to cause all kinds of problems. If you don't believe me, just ask about half the people who upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista. As we started to deploy Office 2007, we discovered that it was no different when it came to upgrading.

When we configure a brand new computer that had no previous version of Office installed, the process would only take about ten minutes to complete. Our department recently had to configure over 150 new laptops and not a single one of them had a problem with a fresh install of Office 2007. The problems started coming up when we tried upgrading people from Office 2003 to Office 2007.