Old but effective Office versions for Windows 10/11
brucine Posted messages 25228 Registration date Status Member Last intervention -
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4 answers
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Otherwise, there is LibreOffice which also offers older, lighter versions than the latest LTS - for free, without a license, even if it is not forbidden to make a donation...
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Hello,
2007 works without issue but I strongly doubt, aside from 32 bits which have never prevented any program from running, the full compatibility of previous versions.
It’s not just about bits and new Excel features; there are also, for example, problems with DLLs or overlays (.NET and the like).
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It's good for collectors, but it's like driving a 2CV; you have to be aware of the insecurity of using this type of tool...
To use it offline as a modern typewriter, why not
But honestly... software that is 20 years old is no longer a work tool, but a security sieve.
The most reliable economical office suite would rather be found in open-source suites, such as LibreOffice.
Otherwise, pulling out Windows 3.1, with DOS 5.5 and Word 6 and its 10 installation disks could be nice for nostalgic folks ????
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The cost isn’t really the issue; you’ll find some around 0 to 1€.
Of course Office 365 connects online, modern versions to a lesser extent due to optional Cloud and simply because they don’t work without periodic verification Click to Run.
Office 2007, for example, isn’t very communicative and will work by default in a “closed circuit” mode, with therefore a relatively small security risk, but for example Office 2019 runs without issue on a Windows 10 machine that is relatively underpowered with a budget processor, 8 GB of RAM and a mechanical hard drive.
The question thus only really arises for the dinosaurs, and where, to be caricatural, I don’t really see how we would install, say, Office 2019 on XP or Windows 7, and where outside of Office, old operating systems are by themselves a security risk anyway.
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Hello,
just to understand in what way old software are "security shambles" / "leaky" ?
As far as I know these old versions do not have external communication, so where is the problem please ?
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Hello,
As I’ve illustrated, the risk lies more with the old operating system that will support them, since they are useless on a recent one.
But if we want to nitpick to the end and if we have not blocked Internet access by a firewall, nothing prevents Word 2007, for example, from connecting to the Internet, not to mention Outlook 2007 whose purpose is that, and thus there are security flaws that can be exploited (but it’s also the case in recent Office versions whose fixes are always a step behind).
See for example:
https://learn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/security-updates/security/20200285
Now, this remains as theoretical in Office 2007 as in recent versions except perhaps 365; it’s not clear why a private individual would be subject to a targeted attack, although there have certainly been and continue to be Office-specific viruses that the victim will usually have downloaded as email attachments.
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@brucine StatusMember don’t feel obligated to respond systematically, the question wasn’t necessarily addressed to you; I was asking more to @kisscool StatusMember who talked about a "strainer" / "sieve".
That said, it’s been ages since I used Word 2007, but, to talk only about it, I don’t really see how the latter would connect to the Internet, unless I do it voluntarily, but that isn’t really the role of a word processor and, to my knowledge, the entry point is the router/modem and Windows and both have a firewall.
NB: Office 2007 is incompatible with Windows 10 64-bit
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Hello,
No, I ran it for a while on a 64-bit Windows 10 before nevertheless deciding to go more modern: every 32-bit program runs on 64-bit Windows; the inverse is not true.
If we want to nitpick (again we don’t see why a private individual would be targeted), just like the end of Windows 10 security updates, nothing excludes in unpatched Office versions (and perhaps even if they are patched) system vulnerabilities that allow through these software a system call that would not be initiated voluntarily by the user and, since these are legitimate Windows executables, that the process be transparent to a firewall unless it does not block this executable itself, but flows that would be considered abnormal: ports, protocol, direction, abnormal cross-calls to other executables.
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