Office 2010: 64 bit or 32 bit

I just got an email today from my college offering me Office 2010 professional for free

. I downloaded Office 2010 (64 bit) and I got a message saying that I either had to uninstall Office 2007 (32 bit) or install the 32 bit version of Office 2010. Are there any significant advantages of 64 bit Office 2010 over the 32 bit version?

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tiersten

Not particularly. It just allows you to open even more massive files. If you go for Office 64 bit then you must make sure that none of your addons/plugins are 32 bit. Last time I looked, Microsoft still recommended that you use Office 32 bit just because you didn't gain particularly much and lost compatibility with older software.

hiddenknight821

exampasser wrote: »

I just got an email today from my college offering me Office 2010 professional for free . I downloaded Office 2010 (64 bit) and I got a message saying that I either had to uninstall Office 2007 (32 bit) or install the 32 bit version of Office 2010. Are there any significant advantages of 64 bit Office 2010 over the 32 bit version?

I don't believe there is. You are better off going with a 64-bit version if you have a 64-bit OS for optimizing capability. Having a 32-bit on a 64-bit may not perform better, especially when it can't allocate more memory for clipboard. Maybe I could be wrong about this and I guess this is only true for OS.

EDIT: Ah, Tiersten beat me to it. I was interrupted at work for a while.

exampasser

Thanks guys, 32 bit it is (not worth dealing with MS support if I wanted to reinstall Office 2007.)

RTmarc

Just for the record, this comes verbatim from one of Microsoft's download sites:

Important: Microsoft strongly recommends the use of 32-bit (x86) versions of Office 2010, Project 2010, and Visio 2010 applications as the default option for all platforms. Learn more about the deployment considerations for x64 and x86 at TechNet.

SteveLord

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I don't believe there is. You are better off going with a 64-bit version if you have a 64-bit OS for optimizing capability. Having a 32-bit on a 64-bit may not perform better, especially when it can't allocate more memory for clipboard. Maybe I could be wrong about this and I guess this is only true for OS.

EDIT: Ah, Tiersten beat me to it. I was interrupted at work for a while.

Just because you have a 64bit OS, doesn't mean you are doomed if you run anything that isn't. You'll experience more doing the 64bit version...which practically offers nothing for most people as previously stated. 64bit operating systems manage nearly all 32bit programs (to include games) just fine.

FWIW to the OP, I've had Office 2010 on Win7 Enterprise x64 since it was released. No issues to speak of.

whatthehell

I believe, for the most part, that 32 bit apps will run in 64 bit OSes in a sort of emulation mode?

If you check out Task Manager, you will see the apps running in 32 bit mode denoted by a "xxxxx*32" where xxxxx is the process name.

But yeah, I would just go with the 64 bit ver for a 64 bit OS.

Cheers!

RobertKaucher

One important thing that you need to be aware of: ALL Office apps that you install must be of a matching architecture. So if you install Office 2010 x64 and you need to download SharePoint Designer 2010 or 2007 you MUST install the x64 versions. The same will go for stand alone Visio or Project.

blargoe

Office is the one product that I would recommend staying at 32 bit for now. You'll probably have issues with add-ins with x64. That, and you gain nothing with 64-bit unless you're doing some REALLY serious number-crunching in Excel.

hiddenknight821

SteveLord wrote: »

Just because you have a 64bit OS, doesn't mean you are doomed if you run anything that isn't. You'll experience more doing the 64bit version...which practically offers nothing for most people as previously stated. 64bit operating systems manage nearly all 32bit programs (to include games) just fine.

FWIW to the OP, I've had Office 2010 on Win7 Enterprise x64 since it was released. No issues to speak of.

Funny you mentioned it, because I'm actually running Windows 7 64-bits, and half of the programs on my computer is 32-bit, but again, I try not to give out falsified information on how the OS runs in and out. If I understand better how 32-bit programs run on 64-bit OSes, then I would have given better answer. I was just stating the obvious. 64-bit should pretty much work well on a 64-bit OS.