Something about demanding that end users have Office installed sticks in my craw. When you deliver software for commercial consumption you have to be very careful about demanding that OTHER software MUST be installed.
But if you are going to demand I have office then WHICH VERSION of Office am I required to have? Right now available on the market we have '97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2005, and 2008.
Can you INSURE that your software written for Access 2003 will work on Access 2008?
What if it won't and I feel there are features in Office 2008 I must have? All of a sudden your software has become a bottleneck in my upgrade process.
Conversely, when you upgrade your program to Access 2008, I will also be REQUIRED TO UPGRADE my Office.
Another issue with using these older development environments is "DLL Hell" .Net addresses this because installed apps do not share assemblies but have all the assemblies they need in their own space. This allows you to run multiple versions of an application without breaking the older versions.
