Deploying Office in a Multinational Setting

The core functionality of Microsoft Office 2000 and the plug-in language features of the Microsoft Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack allow users all over the world to run the Office 2000 user interface and online Help in their own languages and create documents in many other languages.

For administrators, this core functionality means that you can deploy a single version of Office to all users, regardless of their language-speaking area. Then you can customize the installation to include local language capabilities or allow users to select their own language settings.

Office language versions and editing tools

Microsoft Office 2000 with MultiLanguage Pack includes files for displaying the Office user interface and online Help in several languages. The MultiLanguage Pack is based on the English version of Office 2000; it does not work with localized versions of Office 2000. The MultiLanguage Pack is included in the following Office configurations:

• Microsoft Office 2000 Premium with MultiLanguage Pack
• Microsoft Office 2000 Professional with MultiLanguage Pack
• Microsoft Office 2000 Standard with MultiLanguage Pack

The Microsoft Office 2000 Proofing Tools, which provide editing tools for many languages, are included in the MultiLanguage Pack and are also available separately. The Proofing Tools do work with localized versions of Office 2000.

 Note    The MultiLanguage Pack Setup program is available in English only. However, the Setup program for the Proofing Tools is available in Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

In addition to the multilingual capabilities of Office 2000 with MultiLanguage Pack, Office 2000 is also localized in many different languages. The localized versions are based on the same international core as Office 2000 with MultiLanguage Pack, but they provide more language-specific functionality.

You can install different combinations of Office language versions and language-specific tools, based on the needs of your international organization, as described in the following table.

International deployment strategies

Depending on the structure of your organization and the languages that you need, you can adopt one of several different strategies for deploying Office internationally. For example, you can deploy language-specific custom installations from a centralized administrative source. Or you can deploy Office across your international administrative departments and allow each department to customize the installation for its own language-speaking area.

Deploying Office from international headquarters

If your organization is centralized, where one administrative group deploys Office to the entire organization, you can make all the customizations your users need at your headquarters and deploy directly to users internationally. In this scenario, you customize the MultiLanguage Pack and create a custom installation of Office for each language-speaking area.

For example, if you were deploying Office and the MultiLanguage Pack to users in the United States and Canada, you might deploy Office as follows:

• For English-speaking users in the United States, install only proofing tools from the MultiLanguage Pack, and enable languages for editing as needed.
• For Spanish-speaking users in the United States, install Spanish language features from the MultiLanguage Pack, leave the installation language set at U.S. English, set the user interface and online Help language to Spanish, and enable Spanish for editing (English is automatically enabled for editing if the installation language is English).
• For users in English-speaking Canadian provinces, set the installation language to Canadian English, and enable Canadian French and Canadian English for editing.
• For users in Québec, install French language features from the MultiLanguage Pack, set the installation language to Canadian French, set the user interface and online Help language to French, and enable Canadian French and Canadian English for editing.

Deploying Office at local subsidiaries

If your organization’s administrative resources are distributed internationally, each local subsidiary can modify the standard installation for local users.

In this case, a central corporate administrative group supplies each local office with a standard Windows installer transform (MST file) with the installation language set to English. Local administrators customize the MultiLanguage Pack, select language settings, and modify the transform for their language-speaking area.

For example, if you are a site administrator in Hong Kong SAR, you might customize the corporate deployment as follows:

• Install Traditional Chinese language features on users’ computers and set Simplified Chinese language features so that they are installed the first time users activate the features.
• Set English or Traditional Chinese as the language for the user interface and online Help, set the installation language to Pan-Chinese, enable Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese and U.K. English for editing, and select Traditional Chinese as the preferred language (for executable mode in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access).
• Customize Office applications for Hong Kong SAR users.

  For example, add a button to the toolbar in Microsoft Word for converting between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

 Note    For Traditional Chinese user interface and executable mode, users must be running a Traditional Chinese version of Microsoft Windows®, or Windows 2000 with the system locale of Hong Kong SAR or Taiwan.

See also

Office 2000 has many features designed to fit the needs of international organizations. For more information, see Overview of International Features in Office 2000.

The language features you install must be supported by the user’s operating system. For more information, see Configuring Users' Computers in an International Environment.

Office 2000 migrates settings from and can share files with previous localized versions of Office. For more information, see Planning an International Move to Office 2000.