What’s New in Office 2000 Installation

Custom Installation Wizard Replaces Network Installation Wizard

To customize the installation process in previous versions of Microsoft Office, you used the Network Installation Wizard to modify the text files used by Acme Setup — a complex and labor-intensive undertaking. In Office 2000, new tools make this process much more efficient and flexible.

The Office Custom Installation Wizard works with the new Windows installer technology. The choices you make in the Custom Installation Wizard are recorded in a Windows installer transform (MST file). When you run the transform with the Windows installer package (MSI file), your modifications to the standard installation process are carried out.

Because the original package file remains unchanged, you can create as many different transforms as you wish — which means you can use the wizard to create unique installations of Office 2000 for every department in your organization.

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Customizing Office more precisely

The functionality, flexibility, and user interface of the Custom Installation Wizard represent a great improvement over the Network Installation Wizard. The Custom Installation Wizard has been expanded to include new features and extensive online Help.

Unlike the Network Installation Wizard, the new installation technologies in Office 2000 allow you to customize many more aspects of the installation process. By using the Custom Installation Wizard, you can:

• Set installation options for individual Office features, rather than having to set one option for the entire product.
• Hide selected options from users during Setup.
• Add custom files and registry keys to the installation.
• Customize desktop shortcuts for each Office application.
• Set default user options.

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Customizing applications beyond Office

Although the Custom Installation Wizard is designed especially for customizing Office 2000 Setup, it can also be used with the broader family of Office-compatible applications — any product that uses the Windows installer technology.

For example, you can use the Custom Installation Wizard to perform any of the following tasks:

• Customize installation of the Microsoft Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack.
• Customize installation of Microsoft Publisher 2000.
• Specify other applications to run on the user’s computer after Office Setup is completed.

The Custom Installation Wizard takes advantage of other Office customization tools as well. For example, you can include an Office profile settings (OPS) file that you create with the Profile Wizard to preset user options in Office applications. You can also run the Microsoft Internet Explorer Administration Kit from within the Custom Installation Wizard to customize the way that Office Setup installs Internet Explorer 5.

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See also

The Custom Installation Wizard makes it easy to customize the Office installation process as well as the user’s computer. For more information about the Custom Installation Wizard, see Office Custom Installation Wizard.