Microsoft office 2010 for Windows XP is only available for 32 bit version, not 64 bit version. More details here
Update on Microsoft Office 2010 on Windows XP
Update: Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows 7/Vista/XP has been released to the market and is available for purchase. To know more about basic office 2010 features, we recommend you to go through this short microsoft office 2010 training related content.
However, we must tell you that if you’re still using Windows XP then there are far better options available to you such as Windows 7 or even Vista edition of Windows OS.
Office 2010 on Windows XP may still be efficient, running on Windows XP but using the latest version of Office suite with a decade old Windows version, which is not longer supported(for technical assistance, patches and security updates) by Microsoft itself, is definitely not a good idea.
Microsoft has clarified that Office 2010, the upcoming application suite from Microsoft will NOT support Windows XP 64 bit version at all. More astounding is the fact that this is for the first time that Microsoft is releasing two versions of Office 2010, 32 bit and 64 bit.
Now if Microsoft is releasing ‘first ever’ 64 bit version of Office 2010, why can’t that version support WinXP 64 bit version. Because, Microsoft is sick and tired of their eight year old operating system(Win XP 32 bit, in particular), which is still the most popular operating system in the world.
With no revenues coming from Win XP anymore, Microsoft is now least interested in supporting Win XP but as XP is still the most popular OS around, they can’t pr-empt their XP support, even if they wish to. Not offering support for latest Microsoft’s software releases is possibly the only way for them to let people get rid of Win XP.
To do things smoothly rather than being too abrupt, Microsoft has decided to stop providing Win XP 64 bit support for Office 2010. Expect that Microsoft will follow up with many such moves to make people jump to Windows 7.
For information sake, here are the Windows versions(both Personal and Enterprise) supported by Microsoft Office 2010.
- Windows XP (32-bit only)
- Windows Server 2003 R2 with MSXML 6.0 installed
- Windows Vista SP1+
- Windows Server 2008 SP2+
- Windows 7 (all versions)
- Windows Server 2008 R2
And 64 bit version of Office 2010 will, of course, be useless for 32 bit versions of any version of Windows. In fact, that the very reason that it truly hard to find a 64 bit version of Office 2010 at retail stores and even on Online stores.