Understanding 32bit versus 64bit Office/Outlook choices
Microsoft Office ‘2010 and ‘2013 comes in 2 bit flavours – 32bit and 64bit. Many think that the 64bit version is automatically a better version to have when in fact, from a functional basis, the vast majority of people do not require the one major advantage that the 64 bit Office suite provides which is using <very> large Excel spreadsheets.
Any 32bit versions of Office will run on any 64bit operating system. In fact the 32bit version remains the default choice when installing Office and is also the recommended version to install. Some additional articles that would be worthwhile reviewing on the topic are
Choose the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Office
https://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/excel-help/choose-the-32-bit-or-64-bit-version-of-office-HA010369476.aspx
64-bit editions of Office 2013
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee681792.aspx
To summarize, the significance of which bit level is best suited to you depends largely on whether or not you are currently using (or may in the future) either as Outlook addins or even 3rd party standalone programs that interact with Outlook. You cannot use a 32bit program to access a 64bit program (or vice-versa) which is something that applies to everything, not just Microsoft Office.
To put things another way, if you decide to use the 64bit version of Office, any addin <MUST> be written using 64bit code (and vice versa). If you suddenly find that your old addins “don’t work”, it’s not something that is an Outlook “problem” – the vendor of the addin must provide a version of its product that works with the Outlook bit level version in use. It’s not something that can be “fixed” in/by Outlook (Microsoft).
Category: Understanding Outlook
