March 22, 1999

As an administrator, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to deploy Microsoft Office 2000 with a standard set of user options already selected? Or how about being able to back up a user’s settings from a computer that’s being retired, and then restore them all to a replacement computer? You can accomplish these tasks easily by using the Profile Wizard for Office 2000.

The Profile Wizard allows you to capture user-defined settings, including options set in the Options dialog box (Tools menu) in all of your favorite Office applications, and restore them easily to any computer — or to all the computers in your organization. You can use the Profile Wizard by itself, or with the Custom Installation Wizard.

The simple user interface in the Profile Wizard lets you save and then restore your Office 2000 settings. Let’s say you’ve set up a test computer with Office 2000 and customized the settings for most of the users in your organization. Now you’re ready to roll out Office 2000.

By using the Profile Wizard, you can:

1. Save your settings in an Office profile settings (OPS) file.
2. Use the Custom Installation Wizard to include the OPS file in a customized transform (MST file).
3. Roll out Office 2000 to all of your users and apply your settings at the same time.

Or say you’ve been using Office 2000 for a while and are about to get a new computer, but you don’t want to lose any of your personal settings. Use the Profile Wizard to back up your settings in an OPS file, and then restore them on the new computer.

You can run the Profile Wizard through its graphical user interface or through a command-line interface. You can include the OPS file as part of your customized Setup, or you can run the Profile Wizard at the end of the installation process to restore the settings then. And because the wizard is customizable, you can collect only the settings you need.

Related Links

For more information about using the Profile Wizard, see Profile Wizard in the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit.