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Avatar of Hankwembo Christopher,FCCA,FZICA,CIA,MAAT,B.A.Sc
Hankwembo Christopher,FCCA,FZICA,CIA,MAAT,B.A.ScFlag for Zambia

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Office 32 BIT Vs 64 BIT

Hi Experts

Just a clearance on Office 32 Bit and 64 Bit, last week I had a client who had Office 64 BIT and my application was done office 32 BIT.
We tried to down the Ms access run-time 32 BIT to suit my application, it gave us a message like we need to remove first office 64 BIT and then install 32 BIT.
Then since it had already access 365 full installed as part office 64 BIT, we tried to install my application directly and it was able to run without any issues.
My question is now if since my application was done using office 32 BIT, in the following situations below, is it okay to do the following:
(1)      If the actual office installed is 64 BIT but without Ms  access run-time then the Ms access run-time to install is 64 BIT
(2)      If the actual office installed is 32 BIT but without Ms run-time then the Ms access run-time to install is 32 BIT
Can we conclude by saying if the application was done in 64 BIT office then it cannot run on office 32 BIT but on 64 BIT

Is there a way to also check the actual office installed on the computer?

Kindly guide on this

Regards

Chris
Avatar of Kimputer
Kimputer

You can do regkey check on a few locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Bitness
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Bitness

It's either x86 or x64

You usually start with the Wow6432Node, checking for for the existence for all available versions (in this case, it's 16.0, but since you don't know which version, you should check them all).
If none exist, do the same for the "normal" node.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Jim Dettman (EE MVE)
Jim Dettman (EE MVE)
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Avatar of Hankwembo Christopher,FCCA,FZICA,CIA,MAAT,B.A.Sc

ASKER

Can 32 BIt work on 64 Bit ???????????

But not 64 BIT to work on 32 BIT
You app?   It depends.   If you are not distributing as a .accde, and your app uses no external libs or add-ins, then yes.  If it contains API calls, there are things you need to do to enable it to run in both, but you can do it.

 Access will re-compile it on the fly when it runs.

 In regards to Office and the runtime, the rules are different; 32 and 64 bit installs cannot exist side by side from Access 2010 up.

You can have A2007 installed in 32 bit, and Access 2010 and up installed as 64 bit, and that's the only way to get a 32 and 64 bit on the same machine.

Jim.
The whole bit-ness thing is pretty confusing.
1. The vast majority of PC hardware is 64-bit.  "64" is the number of bits in the registers used to hold addresses.  More bits mean that the software can address bigger spaces such as larger monitors, more memory, and larger disks and in the case of excel and Word, etc, open/create larger documents
2. The majority of computers run 64-bit OS's although you can run a 32-bit OS on 64-bit hardware.  You just loose the ability to address large work spaces.  But you CANNOT run ANY 64-bit software on a 32-bit computer.
3. You cannot mix the bit-ness of Office components of the same version because Office shares libraries so you can't install 64-bit Excel 2016 so you can work with humongous spreadsheets and install the rest of Office 2016 (including Access) as 32-bit.  It is all or nothing.
4. As Jim mentioned, It might be possible to have different versions of Office installed in separate directories.  I would be very careful to not have a 32-bit version of an Office component open at the same time as any 64-bit version.  Who knows what would happen.  There is some issue with installing multiple versions of Outlook.  I'm not sure whether you are not allowed to do it or if only one will work.  Developers, who are typically the only users with this version problem usually use virtual PCs to support this.
<< I would be very careful to not have a 32-bit version of an Office component open at the same time as any 64-bit version. >>

 It works....there are no issues.

  There is another piece to this as well, which is not directly related to bitness, but rather Office.   Office comes in CTR (Click to Run) type installs and traditional MSI installs, and you can't mix the two.   It's one or the other.  This has been a problem, because Access 2016 is the first version to offer a CTR install of the runtime.

  Office 2019 by the way will only come in CTR versions and it will only run under windows 10:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4086137/office-2019-on-premises-release-details-february-1-2018

 O365 has been CTR since the start.

Jim
Looks like MS is forcing the issue.  It is a subscription model or nothing.  It's their ball and they are calling the shots.  So, if you want an MSI version, buy O2016 ASAP before it is gone forever and you have nothing left but a subscription option.
<< It is a subscription model or nothing>>

 Not quite, but they are certainly pushing everyone that way.

  However the CTR vs MSI package is a change in deployment method and it will apply to both O365 and perpetual licenses.   CTR is actually far superior to MSI capabilities, the two biggest of which are:

1. It's up to date as soon as it is installed.
2. It uses virtualization technology to run in its own "sandbox", so you'll be able to easily run multiple versions of Office in the future.

There's an overview of it here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219427.aspx

 at some point, everything will be CTR, whether it's O365 or a perpetual license.

Jim.
Thanks for the explanation.  I'm still sorry I gave away my laptop with O2010 installed.  I could certainly have used it today instead of fighting a loosing battle with SSMA yet again.
I'm still sorry I gave away my laptop with O2010 installed.  I could certainly have used it today instead of fighting a loosing battle with SSMA yet again.

While it doesn't help with the struggle right now, I can tell you that the issues with SSMA have been raised by a number of people and Microsoft is aware of them.

Hopefully we'll see some progress on that front in the future.

Jim.
My client is spending the day TYPING in the table definitions to SQL Server because we couldn't get SSMA to work and we don't have time to wait for a real fix.  At least the schema isn't so complex that this would not be feasible.  Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack this thread.
@Hankwembo,
Did you really intend to choose Jim's post as the answer or did you just get lost in the close process?  the post you chose as the solution was just chatter between Jim and myself.