In years past the common practice when CRM professionals were asked by clients about installing 64-bit Office, the answer was clear “Don’t do it!”.

First off there was little compelling reason to install 64 Bit Office as the only real application in the suite that took advantage of it was Excel.

That common thinking has changed in the last year or so. First off, we can now access CRM via not only other browsers than IE but the dependence on Active – X support has dropped off the required list.

The latest TechNet Articles for both CRM 2015 and CRM 2016 are recommending the installation of 64-bit Office when you have 64-bit Windows installed.

However, you should still consider the implications of using 64 Bit Office instead of the 32-bit version depending on your organization’s requirements in other areas. The 64-bit version of Office may perform better in some cases, but there are limitations:

• Solutions using ActiveX controls library, ComCtl controls won’t work.
• Third-party ActiveX controls and add-ins won’t work.
• Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) that contain Declare statements won’t work in the 64-bit version of Office without being updated.
• Compiled Access databases, like .MDE and .ACCDE files, won’t work unless they’re specifically written for the 64-bit version of Office.
• In SharePoint, the list view won’t be available.