A common problem many SharePoint developers and designers are facing with the release of SharePoint 2010 is that you can’t install both SharePoint Designer 2010 and 2007 on the same machine unless all your binaries are the same.
On my machine I run Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit) with Office 2010 (64 bit). If you try and install SharePoint Designer 2010 (64 bit) and you already have SharePoint Designer 2007 (32 bit) installed you’ll get the following error message:
“You cannot install the 64-bit version of Office 2010 because you have 32-bit Office products installed. These 32-bit products are not supported with 64-bit installations:
- Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007
- Microsoft Office Vision Professional 2007
- Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007
If you want to install 64-bit Office 2010, you must uninstall all 32-bit Office products first, and then run setup.exe in the x64 folder. If you want to install 32-bit Office 2010, close the Setup Program and then either go to the x86 folder at the root of your CD or DVD and run setup.exe, or get the 32-bit Office 2010 from the same place you purchased 64-bit Office 2010.”
So from what I’ve read a number of users have just opted for running the 32-bit versions of Office if they require SharePoint Designer 2007 to maintain their existing sites. However there is a solution that allows you to install the 64-bit Office products, including designer, alongside SharePoint Designer 2007 which only comes in the 32-bit flavor.
What you need to do is uninstall SharePoint Designer 2007 32-bit, and then install all of your Office 2010 64-bit applications, including SharePoint Designer 2010. After you’ve installed all the applications go back and run the SharePoint Designer 2007 installation again, and voila you’ve got a dev machine with SharePoint Designer 2010 64-bit and SharePoint Designer 2007 32-bit.
