Barbara -

Second Item:

Microsoft discontinued most "free" support for Win95/Win98/Win98SE over two years ago. This includes support for "Office 97." They recently attempted to discontinue all support for these programs, but have relented to a degree, due mainly to the large number of users in countries where they don't have an "export license" to ship newer systems. When I went to the Knowledge Base yesterday, to try to find information on Office 97, all generic searches for info on Win95, Win98, Win98SE, or Office97, or for individual Office97 components return the same 7 articles, and none of the search results had "working links" to useful information – they all just linked back to the same 7 articles. While I'm sure they will "fix" this soon, for the present there is no way for anyone (in the US) to easily get into information that is in the knowledge base that relates to these older programs. Results may be different for people searching from UK or other continents – I can't say.

Anyone still using Office 97, or Win98SE, should make note of the Windows 98 Support Center address (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;w98). I got there using a link in an article that I'd "saved as a web page" about 2 years ago. It's still up, but for the present, it appears that it would be very difficult to find it "from scratch."

The above Windows 98 Support Center page does give usable links to a few FAQ items, and my be helpful for those still using these programs.

Even from the Win98 Support Center page, searching for known articles by article number results in the same 7 "results" previously cited – which don't even lead back to the Support Center; and attempts to get to articles using the complete "search string" from previous results get "page not available." They do apparently intend to restore access to existing Knowledge Base articles for Win98SE and Office97, but it's impossible to say when that might happen – or if it ever will give reliable access.

John