OL97: Outlook Evaluation Edition Setup Issues

• Microsoft Outlook 97
• Microsoft Office Professional 97

SUMMARY

The Outlook 97 Evaluation Edition is a copy of Outlook that you can use for a 120 day trial period. This article describes several issues related to the order of installation of the evaluation copy and the full version of Outlook.

MORE INFORMATION

Summary

The Setup programs for Office 97, Outlook 97 Standalone, and Outlook 97 Evaluation Edition all automatically replace older files, but the Setup programs will not replace newer files. Outlook's overall program version number may not match the internal file version numbers which these Setup programs use. The list below contains the internal file versions of each configuration of Outlook:

• Office Professional Outlook 8.0 file versions are 8.0.0.3513.
• Outlook Standalone 8.0 file versions are 8.0.0.3513.
• Outlook for Exchange 8.01 file versions are 8.1.0.3817.
• Outlook Evaluation Edition 8.01 file versions are 0.0.8.1.

Order of Installation Scenario 1

If you install the Outlook Evaluation Edition (Outlook 8.01) and then Office 97 (Outlook 8.0), Office 97 replaces the Outlib.dll file in the Outlook Evaluation Edition. This means you do not have the Outlook 8.01 files.

To solve this problem, either uninstall everything and use Office 97, or install the released version of Outlook 8.01, which installs the new Outlib.dll file.

Order of Installation Scenario 2

If you install the Outlook Evaluation Edition (Outlook 8.01), install Office 97 (Outlook 8.0) and then uninstall Outlook Evaluation Edition, Outlook is completely removed from your computer. You can only add Outlook by removing Office 97 and reinstalling Office 97.

This scenario happens because Office 97 does not install all of the Outlook files since newer file versions are already on the computer. When you uninstall the Evaluation copy, you remove some files Office did not install. If you try to reinstall Outlook from the Office Setup program, it cannot install the missing files since Office did not install them.

To solve this problem, either uninstall the Evaluation copy of Outlook before you install Office 97, or do not uninstall the Evaluation copy of Outlook.

Order of Installation Scenario 3

If you install Office 97 (Outlook 8.0) and then the Outlook Evaluation Edition (Outlook 8.01), you do not get the Outlook Evaluation Edition files since they have an older version number (version 0.0.8.1 files) than the Office 97 Outlook files (version 8.0.0.3513 files).

You may encounter this problem if you are using Office 97 and want to evaluate the newer version of Outlook. If the Outlook Evaluation Edition files had newer version numbers, they would overwrite existing Office 97 files and your Office 97 programs would become unusable.

To evaluate Outlook 8.01 you should install it on a computer that does not have an older version of Outlook.

Order of Installation Scenario 4

If you install the Outlook Evaluation Edition (Outlook 8.01) in an evaluation folder and then install Office 97 (Outlook 8.0) in a new folder, the Office 97 version of Mso97.dll is copied into the evaluation folder rather than the new folder. If you manually delete this file from the evaluation folder then all Office programs stop working.

To resolve this problem, you must uninstall Office 97 and then reinstall Office 97.

Keywords          : StpOthr
Version           : WINDOWS:97
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbbug