64-bit upgrade to OS - potential Excel & Access problems?

[L33]

Hi,

A few colleagues and I are about to get upgrades to 64-bit Windows 7 operating systems. Our manager's been on a crusade to convince the powers-that-be that it's necessary for the sorts of jobs we do so that we can access a larger amount of RAM, and I'm convinced the advantages will outweigh any potential problems. We're all heavy Excel and Access users. I read **** Kusleika's recent blog (Daily Dose of Excel » Blog Archive » Excel 2010 64-bit Problems) and have duly noted the issues he had with the upgrade (the conflict with MZTools is the only thing in there that'd affect me personally, but even that won't affect my co-workers as they're not using it. Only about three of our small team are VBA coders).

I just wondered if there were any other pitfalls and general issues we should all prepare for in advance and/or look-out for afterwards? We're running Office 2010, and have several VBA-laden Excel files and Access databases (most of which are still using the ".mdb" format, which I know is a whole other issue with its own problems regardless of this upgrade!)

Many thanks in advance...

 

[Derek Brown]

Have a look at the following which suggests that Microsoft still recommends Office 32-bit on Windows 64-bit systems.
Choose the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Office - Word - Office.com
I think that most problems could be where you use third-party add-ins.

 

[RoryA]

You only mention an OS upgrade. Unless you change your Office installation to 64bit as well (see the link Derek posted) you should not face any issues.

 

[Derek Brown]

Thank you for the clarification on that, Rory. You are absolutely correct - at work we have been using Office 32-bit on Windows 7 for some time and the only problems that we encountered were with the old printers when 64-bit drivers were not available. That was quite a while ago - everything is fine now.

 

[L33]

That's great - thanks for the responses.... Don't know if this'll sound like a silly question, but the 32-bit Office will still be able to utilise all the RAM the 64-bit OS offers up then...? If so, sounds like our safest option.

 

[RoryA]

No - you will be limited in reality to around 2GB, I think. But at least using 64bit OS with plenty of RAM, you might actually have that much free memory to use!

If you occasionally need 64bit Office for really large files, you might consider a dual boot setup (or virtual machine if you have plenty of RAM installed). You can even install 64bit Office with 32bit if you're careful but the two cannot be the same Office version. (eg you could have 64bit Office 2013 and 32bit Office 2010, but not 64bit 2010 with 32bit 2010)