I am running across more and more firms that have routinely installed 64-bit Office on the assumption that if the Windows 7 operating system is 64-bit they should be running 64-bit Office as well.
Big mistake. There is a useful article on Microsoft technet that explains why most firms must install 32-bit Office.
The key point is that most legal-specific applications, from practice management to time & billing software to document management are 32 bit and therefore will not integrate with 64-bit Office.
The key passage in the Microsoft explanation of this is as follows:
“If users in your organization depend on existing extensions to Office, such as ActiveX controls, third-party add-ins, in-house solutions built on previous versions of Office [such as templates], or 32-bit versions of programs that interface directly with Office [my emphasis], we recommend that you install 32-bit (x86) Office 2010 (the default installation) on computers that are running both 32-bit and 64-bit supported Windows operating systems.”
Note that when you put in the Office DVD to install, by default it installs the 32-bit version. 64-bit support is probably a year or even two in the future.
Comments