Microsoft Office 97 On Windows 8.

Being a fan of old software I thought I would try Microsoft Office 97 on Windows 8 to see if it could run.

Microsoft Office 97 was made for Windows 95 but people have installed it on Windows 2000 and later versions of Windows. But can it run on Windows 8?

Here is what I found when I installed MS Office 97 Professional  on my Windows 8 netbook.

I did a custom install from the CD which installs all of the apps from MS Office. 

I tried the toolbar that comes with Office 97, Microsoft Office Shortcut bar which reminds me of the Sidebar in Windows Vista. But unlike the Sidebar on Vista the 97 Office toolbar can be dragged around different parts of the desktop or made smaller.

It works on Windows 8 as you can see here in the pictures.

It can also find software on your computer. It found my Windows 3.1 File Manager on my PC without any problems. You can add other program files to the toolbar as well.

Office 97 Shortcut Bar on Windows 8.

MS Office 97 Shortcut Bar on Windows 8.

Next I tried Microsoft Word 97 which worked just fine and so did Microsoft Power point and Excel.

Office 97 also has a photo app, Microsoft Photo editor which you can view and edit photos. That worked very well and so did Microsoft Binder.

There is also a search tool called Find Fast included in Office 97 which is a bit like Windows 95's Find, Start Menu Search. Before Microsoft replaced it with Windows Search in Windows 98.

Find Fast works in the same way and found all of my files.

Microsoft Word 97 on Windows 8.

Here is Microsoft Photo Editor from Office 97 On Windows 8.

Microsoft Power Point 97 on Windows 8 with the animated Office Assistant.

Office Assistant the animated search characters that are in all of the software in Office 97 work on 8 and are based on the Characters from Microsoft Bob. Windows XP also has animated search in Windows Explorer( Rover the Dog and Co.) which sadly was removed with Windows Vista. But was still in later editions of Microsoft Office then removed in Office 2007.

The default search character in MS Office is Clippit also nicknamed "Clippy" but you can choose other search characters as shown here.  Or you can  turn them off if you don't want them.

Office 97 comes with animated search characters of which the Windows XP search is based on.

Search Assistants in MS Office 97 including Clippy.

More search companions in Office 97.

Office Assistant character, the cat!

More Office Assistant characters.

I then tried Outlook 97 the email program, but despite my best efforts it did not work. I could not even get it to work on Windows XP so it seems that it can only run on Windows 95.

Microsoft Access does not work on Windows XP either but all of the other software did the same as it does on Windows 7 and 8.
So yes you can run Microsoft Office 97 on Windows 8 and it also works on Windows 7 and Windows XP and Windows Vista.

You can see Microsoft Office 97 in action on Windows 8 in my video.