Sometimes I use Office 2000 under Windows2000 under Virtualbox, and it's amazing how snappy the apps feel when the whole VM has only 64MB of RAM. Everyone should try it once in a while, just as a reminder of what is possible!

The only Office app that I strongly prefer in its modern form is Excel. Modern Excel has some really nice enhancements (sequences and spillover, let and lambda, flash-fill, table formatting, etc) that I miss when I use older versions.

I'm surprised Word 97 doesn't work in compatibility mode.

Office 97 in Windows XP works extremely well.

When XP was released, there was intended to be no support for Office other than Office XP.

Thousands of questions were raised whether Office 97 would work in Windows XP and it was totally discouraged by Microsoft every time.

After about 6 months somebody (like a big company) tried it and since it worked quite well, the news began to filter out.

Within another 6 months there was all kinds of support info for Office 97 under XP as if the disinformation campaign had never existed.

It probably does, but the native experience is better.

I also have the VM set up already for IE, which def does not work right in Wine.

>compatibility mode

Do you mean Wine? It's imperfect emulation for large apps, and it's slower than a VM.