MBA with 10.8 and Dell Projector 3200mp

Hi,

My boss has a Macbook Air (purchased Jan 2013) with OS X (10.8) and an old Dell 3200MP projector and tried connecting via VGA cable with adapter for MiniDisplay. I'm not sure exactly what happened next, but the short story is that it didn't work so she had to use an older MacBook Pro (also with upgraded OS 10.8), which worked perfectly.

Does the Air not work with this 10 year projector?

Should I be using an HDMI cable or something?

Would appreciate any information that you can share.

Thanks!!