Microsoft Office & Act!

There has been a lot of discussion recently about ACT!’s compatibility with some of the latest Microsoft Office applications, specifically Office 2013 (refer this Act! Community post), so we thought we'd provide some clarification based on what we know.

Let's start with the facts:

• Microsoft offers Office 365 and Office 2013
• Office 365 is available as a web only or a web + desktop solution (aka "Office 365 Small Business Premium")
• Office 2013 is desktop only but is available as a full download or as a click-to-run (CTR) application
• Office 365 on the desktop is not the same as Office 2013 (full download or CTR)
• According to the Act! 2013 system requirements neither Office 365 or Office 2013 is supported

Now let's look at the issues:

• Based on feedback from the ACT! Community groups most people are not able to satisfactorily run Office 2013 (full download or CTR) with ACT! 2013
• The issues and environments that people are reporting are varied and the ACT! Support Team are having difficulty replicating the issues - making it difficult to pinpoint the problem (funny enough they seem to have Office 2013 working with ACT! 2013)
• From what we understand no one seems to have successfully run Office 365 (desktop install) with ACT! 2013

What next

Our advice is that it is best to avoid upgrading to Office 365 or Office 2013 at this stage as neither of these will be supported in the next release of Act! (2014). Swiftpage (the owners of Act!) is aware that there is a problem and is working to resolve it. 

Always check your system requirements before upgrading any software/application.