| Upgrade to Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 |
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Today I attempted to upgrade to Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 from my current 2008 version. Although it was released some months ago I only discovered it's existance while surfing for small business tools on the web, i.e. I didn't receive any notice from Microsoft that they had released a new version even though my current version is fully registered and I had indicated at that time that I wanted to be kept up to date on new versions. Before I started the upgrade, I did some research to try to ensure that this was resonably easy to achieve Today I attempted to upgrade to Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 from my current 2008 version. Although it was released some months ago I only discovered it's existance while surfing for small business tools on the web, i.e. I didn't receive any notice from Microsoft that they had released a new version even though my current version is fully registered and I had indicated at that time that I wanted to be kept up to date on new versions. Before I started the upgrade, I did some research to try to ensure that this was resonably easy to achieve, I found no information on the Microsoft site. in fact I found very little information on the web at all. Although one post gave me enough confidence to plow this lonely furrow. So having backed up my MOA2008Exp, I started the 2009 installation.Now, I highly recommend this tool for small business and with a little effort you can achieve seriously valuable and professional results for free, but boy is it unfathomably slow on my machine. So I was encouraged to read that I might get a performance boost by installing SQL Server Express 2008 which I did immediately after installing Accounting Express 2009. The warning message that the process could take 'several minutes' was somewhat of an understatement, but everything completed without incident or further input from me. During the MOA2009Exp installation I was very interested in the Setup | Customize | Advanced dialog. To wit the ‘Don’t install or use local instance’ option and would love to hear from anyone who has used this option to connect to a remote database instance or a non-SQL Server instance. Once installed I opened the application, opened an existing company and the software automatically opened the Upgrade Company Data dialog and started anther protracted process. But it eventually completed without incident which leads me to conclude that someone had spent a lot more time developing the upgrade path, if only they had told others about it. Given that the product is intended for people with limited computer skills, it really surprises me that Microsoft didn’t communicate better on how to upgrade. As was indicated in the post I read, I had to move my custom templates over from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Templates\Office Accounting 2008\Templates to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Templates\Office Accounting 2009\Templates but that was it, everything went remarkably well. I haven’t had a chance to experience the new functionality yet, as I do, I’ll write more.
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