You know it's gonna be a bad day when two users in a row ask you how to fix their Office installations without the source. Trouble always comes in threes; the phone is going to ring again any second now. Now, I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble. I did, after all, sign up for this IT Shop gig. But I prefer my trouble in e-mail — it's not as shrill.

Caller number three turns out to be an account rep putting together a big presentation for a major new client. Word and Outlook were hanging, so he deleted a DLL file that he thought might be the problem. Now Word and Outlook are not just hanging — they're dead, buried, and eulogized.

At this point I'll take any advantage I can get; I lob the question to the smart guy in the next cubicle.

“What am I supposed to tell this guy?”

"Tell him /f."

"Tell him what?"

"Just tell him to run Detect and Repair and keep his itchy fingers away from DLL files."

"Left his CDs at home."

"Send him the path to an admin image."

"From a discount hotel in Nowhere, Nebraska? He'll be lucky to get a slow link."

"Ouch. Should've copied the admin image onto his laptop."

"Not enough disk space."

"You could Fed-ex him a CD."

"Won't get there in time. Besides, he doesn't have time to reinstall. He's got some big presentation in an hour."

"So what's he want you to do?"

"Wave my magic wand and make it all better."

Fortunately, Microsoft Office 2003 has a more down-to-earth solution for supporting laptop users who plug on and off the network over dubious connections. (Which is a good thing because I left my IT magic wand at home today.) And the solution comes before the problem has a chance to happen.

Forget all about creating an administrative installation point when you deploy Office. Just copy the files from your Office 2003 CD — all of the files, including the hidden ones — directly to a network share. Do not run Setup.exe /a. Do not extract any files. Do not double-click any EXE files. Just twitch your mouse and copy the entire tree. The next time a user installs Office from this source, Setup.exe automatically creates a copy of it on the local computer. And wherever that user travels, the local installation source goes along.

What's the catch, you ask? There isn't one. You won’t be able to set Office apps to run from the network, but you couldn’t do that anyway, not if your traveling users have finicky network connections. You can still set features to install on demand. And you can customize Office using the same tools you've always used. As a matter of fact, when you run the Custom Installation Wizard against the compressed source, it cordially invites you to accept the EULA and enter a PIDKEY in the transform. You can even chain apps like FrontPage or Publisher — Setup is quite happy to add them to the same local installation source.

Here's the best part: sooner or later those traveling users will need to patch their Office installations. And you know that some of them — all right, a lot of them — will forget everything you ever told them and download client updates straight from Office Online. It's okay. Turns out, with an available source sitting right there on the hard disk, client updates install without a hitch. Forget about patching administrative installation points. Forget about out-of-sync installations. Join the party and distribute client updates yourself.

Okay, if you've been around at all, you know that anybody who tells you there isn't a catch is probably trying to sell you something. So in the interest of full disclosure, here are a few minor details to keep in mind about a local installation source.

You have to install from a compressed source from the start. If you created an administrative installation point, then you have already extracted the installation files, and you (and your users) are in a committed long-distance relationship with that source. And don't expect a totally free ride. A local installation source does occupy some space on the user’s hard drive — it’s just a lot less space than a copy of the admin image and it’s a lot less trouble than what you're used to.

But the benefits of a local installation source still trump these minor inconveniences. For one thing, unlike certain callers (I’m thinking here of that poor sales guy who has one hour to pitch fruit smoothies to cowboys) a local installation source is forgiving. A new version of the Office 2003 Setup program gives you the option of allowing the Office installation to complete only if the local installation source is successfully created on the local machine. You can also avoid the entire to-cache-or-not-to-cache dilemma by deploying the local installation source ahead of time, before you even start your Office 2003 deployment.

And for those of you who haven’t yet acquired an IT crystal ball, there’s another new tool for covering your bets. Say you missed your chance to create a local installation source. Or say a user like our salesman pal in Nebraska takes it upon himself to delete the hidden \Msocache folder. You can use LISTool.exe to create a local installation source (from the original compressed source) after Office is installed. Or if you have users who are just plain running out of hard disk space, you can use this tool to move or delete the local installation source for them – and then at least you know what happened to it. You can find this downloadable file on the Office 2003 Resource Kit Downloads page.

If you want to know more about how a local installation source can make your life a whole lot easier, there is more information available Taking Advantage of a Local Installation Source.

There's the telephone again. Why is it that people will not use e-mail when they've got a grievance? Apparently they find the sound of their own voices more convincing.

"Hello, IT Shop. … Who? Me? I'm just the guy who’s paid to do other people’s laundry. Is there something I can help you with?"