Hi guys; I'm writing Excel UDF's for clients and publication. I'm finding problems with software running in some versions and different compilation (32 bit or 64 bit). Has anyone thought of or done side by side installation of Office 2007 through 2015 in 32 and 64 bit? Should I run each in a virtual machine or can they co-exist nicely? I would write regression tests in each version and automate release validation. It is done with browsers: you can get a screen with lots of different browsers running the same website and see what goes wrong.
Office 2007 runs separately from Office 2010/2013/2016, hence 2007 can be installed without any issues with other Office versions. However, 2010/2013/2016 runs as virtual applications that have a lot of dependencies registered throughout Windows itself. Therefore, it is never recommended (although it is possible) to install 2010/2013/2016 side-by-side. x86 and x64 versions cannot cohabit together, the installer will automatically throw an error. The installation order of Office versions must be done to work in these priorities: - Oldest Office versions - x86 versions before x64 2013/2016 versions must use the same compilation (x86/x64), else the installation throws an error no matter what. This is not exactly clear between 2010/2013, as there are people who managed to install Excel 2010 (x86) and Excel 2013 (x64). Use a VL installer in any case, as the C2R is not appropriate for this. You will automatically encounter issues, which mainly are: - Recent opened files not saving - Double-clicking to open will open the latest installed Office - Opening Word (which is not the latest Word installation or the latest started Word version) will force a repair of Office - Strange things between Office 2010/2013/2016 (things disappearing, things duplicates, etc.) - Some add-in installers are confused that there are multiple versions - Some add-in installers will install only for one version (which is usually the first earliest Office version, ex: 2010 if you install 2010/2013/2016) - Some settings all installed versions of Office at the same time The best recommended is to use virtual machines. If you have access to a 16GB computer, it should be able to run 2010 x86, 2013 x86, 2013 x64, 2016 x86, and 2016 x64 all together in separate VMs without any issues (provided 5 Windows of 2GB RAM installations). If your workloads are not using GPUs and you have access to Windows Server 2012 Datacenter, use Windows Server 2012 Standard VMs (which pre-activates themselves) to lower the costs for the OS (although if you have VL, a Windows installation is not expensive at all to buy).