Office Custom Installation Wizard

If you are deploying Microsoft Office throughout a large organization, it is probably the most efficient to first install Office on a network server and then to have users run Setup from your administrative installation point.

After you create an administrative installation point, you have many options for managing the deployment of Office. By using the Office Custom Installation Wizard, you can modify the administrative installation point to control how all the users in your organization install Office on their computers.

By using the Custom Installation Wizard, you can do the following:

• Define the path where Office is installed on users’ computers.
• Define the default installation state for all features of Office applications. For example, you can choose to install Microsoft Word on the user’s local hard disk and install Microsoft PowerPoint® to run from the network.
• Add your own files and registry entries to Office Setup so that they are installed along with Office.
• Modify Office application shortcuts, specifying where they are installed and customizing their properties.
• Define a list of network servers for Office to use if the primary server is unavailable.
• Specify other products to install, or programs to run, on users’ computers after Setup is completed.
• Configure Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and Microsoft Outlook® the way that you want.

After you fine-tune the options by using the wizard, your modifications become the default settings for anyone who runs Setup from your administrative installation point. You can even have users run Setup in quiet mode (with no user interaction) so that your modifications define precisely how Office is installed — no questions asked.

Toolbox   The Office Custom Installation Wizard includes a Help file that contains extensive reference information. To get access to Help topics without running the wizard, double-click Custwiz.hlp. This program is installed as part of the Office Resource Kit (orktools.exe). You can find this downloadable file on the Office 2000 Resource Kit Downloads page.