Optimus Template

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Installing Office 2007 on all the computers in your network.

Prepare Office 2007 Files

Copy the contents of the Office 2007 CD to your deployment shared folder

Customise Office 2007

Unlike most other MSI deployments, you do not need to edit msi files or create transforms files to customise the deployment. Instead, settings are applied to the config.xml file in the folder with the same name as the version of Office 2007 that you are deploying. For example, if you are deploying Office 2007 Professional Plus version, the folder is called ProPlus.WW

A full guide on the Microsoft Technet site is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179195.aspx

As a quick guide, I have listed my complete config.xml file - keep reading for an explanation of the elements.

*** Start of File ***

<Configuration Product="ProPlus">

<Display Level="None" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />

<!-- <Logging Type="standard" Path="%temp%" Template="Microsoft Office Professional Plus Setup(*).txt" /> -->

<PIDKEY Value="myVolumeKeyHere" />

<USERNAME Value="MyUsername" />

<COMPANYNAME Value="MyCompany" />

<OptionState Id="ACCESSFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
<OptionState Id="EXCELFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
<OptionState Id="PPTFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
<OptionState Id="PubPrimary" State="local" Children="force" />
<OptionState Id="WORDFiles" State="local" Children="force" />
<OptionState Id="OUTLOOKFiles" State="absent" Children="force" />

</Configuration>

*** End of File ***

<Configuration Product="ProPlus"> - This needs to be the same as the SetupID referenced in the setup.xml file (in the same folder where you put config.xml. It refers to the version of Office 2007 that is being deployed.

<Display Level="None" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" /> - This element prevents any messages or windows appearing during the installtion. This is important for Group Policy based deployment.

<PIDKEY Value="myVolumeKeyHere" /> - The value of this element need to be your volume key without spaces or hyphens.

<USERNAME Value="MyUsername" /> & <COMPANYNAME Value="MyCompany" /> - These two fill in the username and company fields for the "Licensed to" fields ususally filled in during a normal installtion.

<OptionState Id= - These elements prevent / enable individual programs from being installed. In the example above Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word are installed; and Outlook is not.

Deploy Office 2007

Add the .msi file with the same name as the <Configuration Product=" element  to the GPO. In my example you will find a .msi file called ProPlus.msi in the  ProPlus.WW folder.

Prevent the Welcome to the 2007 Microsoft Office system pop up screen

If you run mandatory profiles on your network, you may want to add the reg key either to a login script, or edit it into your ntuser.man file:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\General]
"ShownOptIn"=dword:00000001

This will prevent the "Welcome to the 2007 Microsoft Office system"  Privacy Options Opt-In screens appearing when one of the office programs is first launched.