When users upgrade to Microsoft® Office XP, Setup automatically migrates their custom settings from previous versions of Office. In some cases, however, an organization might need to deploy Office XP as a new installation, which bypasses default Setup migration behavior.

For example, you might purchase new computers before distributing Microsoft Windows® XP and Office XP. Or you might reformat users' hard disks before installing new software. In these scenarios, users lose their custom application settings when they move to Office XP. However, the Office Profile Wizard provides a solution for migrating user settings even when you perform a clean installation of Office XP.

Normally, the Profile Wizard cannot be used to save settings from one version of Office and apply them to another. In this case, however, information about users’ previous settings is stored in the Windows registry on the new computer ahead of time. When Office XP is installed, Setup detects the registry entries and migrates the Office settings as if the previous version were installed.

For example, to migrate Office 2000 settings to a new installation of Office XP when upgrading users' computers to Window XP, you follow these steps:

1. Run the Office 2000 Profile Wizard on the old computer and store the Office profile settings file (OPS file) on a user-specific server.
2. Install Windows XP on the new computer.
3. Run the Profile Wizard again to apply the OPS file to the new computer.

   This step writes Office 2000–specific entries to the Windows registry.

4. Create additional registry entries that trigger settings migration during Office XP Setup.
5. Install Office XP with your custom registry entries.
6. Start each Office XP application to migrate settings.

The following sections provide more details about these steps.

Capturing and applying settings from a previous version

You must run the Office 2000 version of the Profile Wizard (Proflwiz.exe version 1.0.0.2624) on the legacy hardware to capture each user’s Office 2000 settings. Then you store the OPS file and Proflwiz.exe on the same server.

After you install Windows XP, you run the Office 2000 Profile Wizard again to restore Office 2000 settings on the new computer. The Profile Wizard includes command-line options that make this process easy to automate. For example:

\\server\share\proflwiz.exe /r
\\server\share\%username%\Office2000Settings.ops /q

This command line does the following:

• Runs the Profile Wizard quietly (/q).
• Restores Office 2000 application settings from an OPS file named Office2000Settings.ops to the local computer (/r).

  These Office 2000 settings are stored as value entries in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch of the Windows registry.

For a complete list of Profile Wizard command-line options, run the Profile Wizard and click the Help button.

Creating registry entries that trigger settings migration

When Office XP is installed, Setup detects the Office 2000 entries restored from the OPS file and writes a migration subkey to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch of the Windows registry. The first time each user of the computer starts an Office XP application, the application determines whether to migrate settings for that user based on the values in this subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\10\Common\Migration

You can create the necessary value entries in this subkey manually. An alternative, recommended method is to allow Office XP to create them automatically on a test computer that has Office 2000 installed.

To generate a registry file with migration settings

1. On a test computer that has Office 2000 installed, install Office XP.

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   Important   Do not start any Office applications.

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2. Start the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and select the following subkey:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\Migration

3. On the File menu, click Export and save the subkey to a REG file.
4. Import the migration REG file to each client computer.

   You can store the REG file on a server and use a script to install it remotely.

Understanding Office migration code

If you want to create the migration registry entries manually, you must add subkeys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\10\Common\Migration — one subkey for every application for which you want to migrate settings, and one subkey for shared Office settings. Setup migration code detects these settings and interprets them based on the stored values.

The complete list of Office 2000 subkeys is as follows:

• Word
• Excel
• Access
• Powerpoint
• Graph
• Outlook
• Office
• Frontpage
• Publisher

Each of these subkeys contains the value entries listed in this table.

If you author the migration REG file manually, make sure that the language version of Office 2000 (that is, the LCID stored in the Lang value entry) matches the language version of Office XP. Setup does not migrate settings across language versions. The LCID for English is 1033. You must include a value for Lang to trigger settings migration.

The UpgradeVersion value entry, which is also required for settings migration, specifies one of the versions of Office listed in the following table.

The Path value entry contains a fully qualified path to the application EXE file or, in the case of shared Office settings, to Mso.dll. Office 2000 settings migration does not require a value for Path.

Migrating settings when you install Office XP

After you restore Office 2000 settings and import the migration file to each client computer, you are ready to install Office XP and migrate user settings.

To migrate settings when you install Office XP

1. If you are using a transform (MST file) in your Office XP deployment, select the following options on the Customize Default Application Settings page of the Custom Installation Wizard:
   • Do not customize; use Microsoft default values
   • Migrate user settings
2. Install Office XP with any additional customizations.
3. Start each Office XP application to complete settings migration.

   Setup migration logic detects the Office 2000 settings and migrates them to Office XP the first time each application is started.

Using the Office Profile Wizard in this way allows you to take advantage of the settings migration logic built into Office Setup even when you start with new computers and new installations of Office XP. Not only do users get the benefits of the improvements in Office XP, but they also preserve familiar and efficient configurations from previous versions.