Whatever happened to... Lotus Smartsuite?

Q I’ve finally upgraded my Vista PC for a Windows 10 laptop. In the past I used Lotus Smartsuite, so I thought I’d seek out an updated version for the new computer — but it seems that it’s no more. I remember Lotus being the must-have office software years ago, so what on earth happened to make it disappear in the nine years since I bought my Vista PC? I found a copy of Smartsuite on ebay. Would that work on my Windows 10 laptop? Mason Hall A Lotus Smartsuite first appeared in 1992, which was some time before Microsoft had completely conquered desktop PCS with its Windows operating system. Smartsuite was designed for Windows but its popularity owed a lot to Symphony, an earlier office suite for DOS that was also written by Lotus.

During this early period of Windows, the Lotus and Microsoft brands were equally well-known. However, Microsoft released Office for Windows in 1990, and it proved very popular. By the mid 1990s, Microsoft and Office were in the ascendency, while Lotus and Smartsuite were in deep trouble. Lotus was eventually bought by IBM and, while Smartsuite development continued for a while longer, by the turn of the century IBM had pretty much thrown in the towel. The last version of Smartsuite to be released was Millennium Edition (or 9.8), in 2002 (pictured above).

That’s a potted history of Lotus Smartsuite — but will an old version run on Windows 10? We don’t have a copy, so we can’t test it, but there’s a chance that it might. If you decide to give it a try, make sure you launch the installation manually by using File Explorer (Windows key+e) to view the disc’s contents, then rightclicking setup.exe and choosing ‘Run as administrator’.

If the software installs successfully but won’t run, press Windows key+x then click Control Panel followed by Programs and then ‘Run programs made for previous versions of Windows’. Then click Next, select Lotus Smartsuite, click Next and follow the instructions.