> Moreover, if I suggested not to install certain security updates and something untoward happened then I'd be blamed.

Rest assured that's not how I work :)

I don't want somethings to blindly copy/paste from. I'm more interested in a good baseline to get started with my own things.

> Re Office 2010/2007. I don't use 2010

That's fine, among the things I want to test is comparing Office 2010 native to Office 2007 in wine32 with patches - I have experience with both Office versions, and the difference is functionality is small enough.

I used Office 2007 on a past experiment with Linux, for a 32 bit machine: I wanted to see how fast it could run old software. However, I ran it fully unpatched (yes, that's bad :) because wrestling with KB while running a test on linux seemed futile.

But it was going to be a long term solution, patches would be way up on the priority list!

The list that you're are using yourself for Office 2007 on your Windows 7 would be interesting as it could give me a basis to try to make that same version work within wine32: it would provide me with a starting point to A-B test every patch in your list, to see which ones damages functionality on Linux (I'd do it like a git bisect), then do more research on these "bad patches" to see how important they are and if there're known way to use them.

> Search a specific KB together with terms such as 'Microsoft spyware' and so on. Use search engines such as StartPage. some netizens are rather clued up about the actions of KB patches, so it's worth taking the time to find them.

Oh totally, it's just that it may take a lot of time, so if I can restrict the scope of these actions to a few patches of interest (ex: in your list, but in my list of things that break Office in Wine) I could do more precise research!

In return, I promise to publish the result of my research on github: it will likely be a script to automate Office deployment on wine both in Linux and WSL.

I'm VERY serious about doing what it takes to ensure I'll be able to run old versions of Office and especially Excel for as long as it takes.

Given our "archeological" interest in Office, it may be helpful to join forces.

> It's possible that 2010 may 'upgrade' Windows with a patch that isn't removed when it's uninstalled (this isn't unusual for Microsoft). This could have some bearing on the matter and it could affect the operation of Advanced Tokens Manager

I would suspect as much, given some of the recommended method I see to make Office 2010 work in 2023. That can be explored: I remember from my test conclusions that while Office 2007 was nice, the support for XLS was perfect but XLSX was rough as it was the first version to support XLSX.

BTW, besides our shared interest for Office, your appreciation of in Windows 7 is also... interesting!

I recently tested mintty on a vintage Thinkpad running Windows 7 and I absolutely loved it! It was SO RESPONSIVE!

Should I have go to the VM route for Office (hopelly not), Windows 7 is what I'd be using in the VM. I'm also genuinely considering Office 2007 running on Windows 7 in a offline vintage Thinkpad.

So could I please ask you too about the list of W7 patches you use? From what I understand, most of them are from before 2017, few of them after. Again, a precise list would be a great starting point (though less important as the Office 2007 list, as from what I understand lots of people are still enamored with W7, so there should be such lists floating around)