Im having these headaches again.....

I have Outlook 2002 (part of the Office Professional package that came with my T30 laptop), and the thing seems to just hang and hang.

I had similar issues some months back, but somehow they went away. Now they are back.

I do autoarchive everytime the stupid program asks me to.... and Ive even tried detect and repair a couple of times but it doesnt seem to help.

I wonder if I should update to the latest version of the MS Suite products?

Question is..... if I want to update to the new Office versions, can this be done on top of my existing programs, and will the installer(s) do this intelligently while retaining all my current settings and data directories (the outlook contacts and email files are what worry me most), or will I have to uninstall everything I have now and re-install everything again (including all the Outlook data files)?

Thanks.