Many organizations will find that they need to upgrade to Office 2007 a department or group of computers at a time over the stretch of a week, a month, or even a longer period of time. Many organizations find that for an indefinite period of time a handful of users will remain on 2003 for various reasons, while the rest of the organization has been upgraded to Office 2007. This means that during this timeframe, you will be in a "mixed Office environment" where some users are using Office 2003 and others are using Office 2007.
But, how will your business offices deal with routing documents in this situation, since the 2003 users will still have the ability to route Excel or Word documents with the "Send to routing recipient" menu option, but if they route the document to a user who has already been upgraded to 2007, then what? The routing feature has been removed from 2007, which is why you are here reading about the Office Routing Plus Add-In! Even if you have installed the Office Routing Plus Add-In on the 2007 user's machine, the Add-In will not be able to determine the routing slip that the 2003 user created with the built in Office 2003 routing mechanism. The reason for this is because Microsoft has deprecated the routing slip related methods in Office 2007 (although, oddly, the methods and properties remain in the API). If you read the Microsoft documentation from MSDN, or visit some tech forums, you will discover that while the "hasRoutingSlip" and other properties and methods remain in the RoutingSlip Object in Office 2007, at run time you will get an error if you try to call any of these features via the Excel or Word API - see official Microsoft article, where the "note" section specifically declares that the entire Routing Slip object "should not be used for Excel 2007 as the feature has been deprecated". So, the Office Routing Plus Add-In cannot detect a routing slip that was set via the Office 2003 built-in routing mechanism because there is no longer a way to inspect the RoutingSlip object in 2007.
No need to panic; the Office Routing Plus Add-In will install in Office 2003 and allow 2003 users to send and receive routed documents to and from 2007 users. Conversely, 2007 users can route to and receive from 2003 users. Very well you say, but how will the IT Office enforce 2003 users to use the routing Add-In when they route documents to 2007 users when they will habitually use the "send to routing recipient" menu in Excel or Word 2003? Again, no need for panic. The Office Routing Plus Add-In will disable the "send to routing recipient" menu in 2003. The Office 2003 users will be forced to use the new Add-In to route all Word and Excel documents. If by chance the 2003 user wishes to turn this menu back on, he/she may do so from within the Add-In. Now your organization can remain in a mixed Office environment for months or years to come and still use routing--well, you may want to eventually get those stragglers onto 2007!
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Windows 7, Vista, XP SP2
Excel 2007 - 2003 (for Excel Add-In)
Word 2007 - 2003 (for Word Add-In)
“ The Office-Routing Add-in allowed us to quickly and easily replace the lost functionality of document routing in Office 2007 without having to develop custom work flows through the Share Point Server – we have been very pleased with the results ”.
– Kent Smith, W.C. Bradley Co.
“ Thanks to the Office-Routing Plus Add-in our team are back in business routing documents for review purpose. Without this valuable add in, we would have to do the whole process manually which is going to be unsustainable. Thanks again! ”.
– Steve Yuen, IT Analyst, Johnson & Johnson Inc.