I just installed upgraded my Office install from Office 2007 to the 64-bit (x64)version Office 2010. I had to completely remove my Office 2007 applications including SharePoint Designer 2007, because no Office 2007 applications can coexist with any 64-bit Office 2010 application.
“That’s OK,” I thought; “who wants the old stuff when I can have the shiny new stuff?”
I fired up SharePoint Designer 2010, eager to do some edits to our SharePoint 2007. That’s when I was greeted with this lovely error:
“Microsoft SharePoint Designer cannot be used to edit web sites on servers prior to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. To edit these sites, you need to use SharePoint Designer 2007.”
I can’t use SharePoint Designer 2010 with my SharePoint 2007 site nor with my customers’ SharePoint 2007 sites? Really? I hope that whoever at Microsoft made the decision that SharePoint Designer 2010 would not support SharePoint 2007 sites was able to find another job after he/she was unceremoniously fired! Could you imagine if Word 2010 could not open Word 2007 or Word 2003 files? Ridiculous.
Ok, so I can’t use SharePoint Designer 2010 to edit my SharePoint 2007 sites and I can’t install SharePoint Designer 2007 on my computer. What’s the answer? Virtualization. I’m spinning up a virtual machine that will host an instance of Office 2007, as well as a few other apps.
LOL… this is so funny! How about just using Sharepoint Designer 2007? What's wrong with that?!!
I had to uninstall SharePoint Designer 2007 because Office 2007 can not coexist with Office 2010 x64.
If you would have installed Office 2010 32 bits including SharePoint Designer 2010 you can afterwards install SPD 2007 again. The two can co-exists on the same OS…..
Thanks for the comment about the 32-bit version of Office 2010, but I already knew that Office 2007 and 32-bit Office 2010 can co-exist (Except for Groove / SharePoint Workspace and Outlook). That is pretty well documented and was never in question. The problem is the 64-bit version of Office 2010. I really did not expect the lack of backwards compatibility in the SharePoint Designer product.
Hey mate,
SPD 2007 can be installed alongside with SPD 2010. There's some valid reasons for not being able to use SPD 2010 with SP 2007.
So for SharePoint 2007 you use SPD 2007, and for SharePoint 2010 you use SPD 2010. No need to virtualize the SPD 2007 install, I'm running both SPD 2007 and 2010 on my machines 🙂
What ever became of this? Was Tobias correct?
Yes, you can install SPD 2007 alongside SPD 2010. It makes for a very inconvenient way to work. It would be kind of like using Word 2010 to open .docx file but having to keep Word-XP around to work with .doc files. Why wouldn't MS just allow SPD 2010 to open up both SP 2007 and 2010 sites, just as Word 2010 can open both .docx and .doc files?