Siemens S7-200 Programming Question

I'm new to the Siemens plc and Step7 software. I have a S7-200 and I like to combine a bunch of alarm bits (%m10.0-%m10.7 & %m11.0-%m11.7) into one "alarm_present" bit (%m0.0).

Is there a easy/clever way to do this other that putting all the bits in parallel? I'm used to programming A-B plcs and just putting in a not equal compare statement for the word. I haven't found the correct command to do this yet.

2nd question: Should I upgrade from v3.2 to v4.0?

You can use the Compare byte instruction (<>B) and check if your byte(s) are equal to 0. If not then set the alarm bit (M0.0).
You could break your word to bytes (I assume you use one word or more for alarm set conditions).

Hope this helps.