Deploying Office in a Multinational Setting

How to Deploy Office Internationally

The following general steps apply to all international deployments of Microsoft Office 2000:

1. Create an administrative installation point for the Microsoft Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack.
2. Customize the MultiLanguage Pack installation.
3. Install Office and the MultiLanguage Pack on a test computer, and specify language settings.
4. Customize the Office installation for different language-speaking areas.

Note   When you customize the installation of Office and the MultiLanguage Pack, you create separate Windows installer transforms (MST files) for Office and for the MultiLanguage Pack. You must distribute the MultiLanguage Pack transform to users after Office is installed on their computers.

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Create an administrative installation point for the MultiLanguage Pack

You run the Setup program for the MultiLanguage Pack in administrative mode to install the MultiLanguage Pack on a server.

Note   The MultiLanguage Pack consists of sets of languages on multiple CD-ROMs. If you want to use languages on different CD-ROMs, you must run Setup separately for each CD-ROM you need and create a separate administrative installation point for each CD-ROM.

To create administrative installation point for the MultiLanguage Pack

1. Create a share on a network server for the administrative installation point.

   The share must be large enough to store the resources for the languages that you need. Each CD-ROM requires approximately 650 megabytes (MB) of server space.

2. On a computer running Windows 95/98 or Microsoft Windows NT® with write access to the share, connect to the server share.
3. On the Start menu, click Run, and then click Browse to locate the MultiLanguage Pack CD-ROM.
4. On the MultiLanguage Pack CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive, select setup.exe and click Open.
5. On the command line following setup.exe, type /a and click OK.
6. When prompted by Setup, enter the organization name you want to define for all users who install the MultiLanguage Pack from this location.
7. When prompted for the installation location, enter the server and the share that you created.

Note   When you run the Setup program for the MultiLanguage Pack in administrative mode, it behaves in the same way as the administrative mode of Office Setup.

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Customize the MultiLanguage Pack installation

After you create an administrative installation point, you can use the Office Custom Installation Wizard to create a customized installation of the MultiLanguage Pack for users in different language-speaking areas.

Important   If you are installing the MultiLanguage Pack on computers running a non-Western European language version of Windows, use only ASCII characters for the text you type to create the MST file in the Custom Installation Wizard. Otherwise, the Windows installer package (MSI file) for the MultiLanguage Pack, which is based on the Western European code page, might not correctly interpret data in the transform.

To customize the MultiLanguage Pack installation

1. Start the Custom Installation Wizard.
2. On the Open the MSI File panel, open Langpack.msi, the installer package for the MultiLanguage Pack.
3. On the Open the MST File panel, click Do not open an existing MST file.
4. On the Select the MST File to Save panel, specify a name for your custom MST file.
5. On the Set Feature Installation States panel, select the features you want to install on users’ computers and specify the installation states.

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Install Office and the MultiLanguage Pack and specify language settings

On a test computer, set Regional Settings (user locale) in Control Panel to match those of the target computer. Doing so allows Office to configure itself for a particular locale when it is installed. If the user is running Microsoft Windows NT, you can also set the test computer’s default code page and fonts (system locale) to match the target computer.

Note   In Windows NT 4.0, if you change the system locale, you must reinstall Windows NT Server 4.0 with Service Pack 3 to restore the operating system’s user interface.

After the system and user locales are set, run Office Setup from either the administrative installation point or from Microsoft Office 2000 Disc 1. Then install the MultiLanguage Pack from its administrative installation point by using a Windows installer transform (MST file) that installs resources for the language settings you want.

Note   If you are using one computer to create more than one custom installation of Office, be sure to remove one installation of the MultiLanguage Pack before you run the MultiLanguage Pack Setup program with another MST file.

You can also install other MultiLanguage Pack features not installed by the MultiLanguage Pack Setup program on your test computer at this time. These features are in the Extras folder of the MultiLanguage Pack CD-ROMs. The CD-ROMs include files for displaying the Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 user interface in different languages, Input Method Editors (IMEs) for Asian languages, and other features.

When you run Office to specify language settings and user preferences, you can use the Profile Wizard to store the settings in an Office profile settings (OPS) file. The OPS file becomes part of a customized installation of Office. Because the choice of editing languages affects the functionality of certain applications, you can create unique OPS files for different groups of users based on the languages they are using.

Typically, most users creating multilingual documents rarely work with more than three languages. Limiting the number of editing languages results in a user interface that is less cluttered and allows Office applications to run optimized for particular languages.

If you want the custom installation of Office to behave like a localized version of Office, run the Language Version utility before specifying language settings. Running this utility switches the installation language, setting your choices of language-related features to only those appropriate for a particular language.

Toolbox   The installation language is set when you install Office. The Office Resource Kit includes the Language Version utility, which allows you to change the installation language after Office is installed. For information about installing this utility, see Language Version.

To switch the language version of Office

1. Start the Language Version utility.
2. In the Use default for box, select the language that you want to switch to.

Important   Running the Language Version utility replaces existing language-related settings and some other custom settings for several applications, so run the utility before you create any custom settings. When you’re finished making settings for one language version, you can rerun the utility and make settings for another language version.

After Office and the MultiLanguage Pack are installed, specify language settings in the Office applications.

To create and store language settings

1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Language Settings.
2. Select languages to use for the user interface, online Help, and editing.

   Users can change these default settings later by running the Language Version utility themselves.

3. Start Office, and specify additional user settings.
4. Start the Profile Wizard to save your settings in an OPS file.

Tip   Even though you include default language settings as part of the custom installation of Office, users can switch languages by running the Microsoft Office Language Settings utility themselves. To prevent users from switching languages, customize the Office installation by using the Custom Installation Wizard and make the feature Microsoft Office\Office Tools\Language Settings Tool unavailable to users.

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Customize Office installation for different language-speaking areas

You run the Custom Installation Wizard to create customized installations of Office for users in different language-speaking areas. Create a separate Windows installer transform (MST file) for each language-speaking area.

Important   If you are installing Office on computers running a non-Western European language version of Windows, use only ASCII characters for the text you type to create the MST file in the Custom Installation Wizard. Otherwise, the installer package (MSI file) for the Office, which is based on the Western European code page, might not correctly interpret data in the transform.

To customize the Office installation for different language-speaking areas

1. Start the Custom Installation Wizard.
2. On the Set Feature Installation States panel, expand the Microsoft Office\Office Tools\International Support portion of the feature tree.
3. Select the Core Support Files feature, and select an installation option.

   This set of files accommodates all commonly used code pages.

4. Select the Extended Support Files feature, and select an installation option.

   This set of files accommodates code pages rarely used in Windows, such as EBCDIC, Macintosh®, MS-DOS® Multilingual (Latin 1), and IBM Cyrillic.

5. Set the installation state for language-specific features, such as for an Asian language or a right-to-left language (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, or Urdu).
6. On the Customize Default Application Settings panel, click Get values from an existing settings profile, and enter the path to the OPS file that contains your custom language settings.
7. On the Add Installations and Run Programs panel, include any batch files you created to install extra language utilities from the MultiLanguage Pack CD-ROM.
8. On the Modify Setup Properties panel, double-click INSTALLLANGUAGE, and select a language.

   The installation language setting determines default behavior of Office applications. For example, if the installation language is German, Word bases its Normal.dot template on German settings and automatically enables German features, such as not tracking editing time.

When you select language-specific features on the Set Feature Installation States panel, keep in mind the following:

• If your users work with languages that use more than one code page, install the Core Support Files feature on users’ computers.
• If your users work with a right-to-left language (Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, or Urdu) and their operating system can support right-to-left text, install the Bidirectional Support feature on users’ computers.
• If your users work with Asian text and they are not running a matching language version of Windows, install the Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, or Simplified Chinese fonts on users’ computers.
• If your users need a full Unicode font — for example, if they are working with Access datasheets that include languages that use more than one code page — install the Universal font on users’ computers.

Note   For users running a non-Asian version of Windows NT version 4.0, do not install more than two of the Asian or Universal font choices. These fonts include many characters and might not display properly if more than two of them are installed on a computer running Windows NT version 4.0.

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See also

The steps for customizing and distributing Office and the MultiLanguage Pack are part of the larger process of deploying Office. For more information, see Managing a Successive Deployment of Office Premium and Related Products.

In addition to specifying language features and providing support for international users, you can customize many other aspects of your Office installation. For more information, see Customizing How Office Features Are Installed and Customizing How Office Options Are Set.

You can use the Office Custom Installation Wizard to customize international installations of Office. For more information, see Office Custom Installation Wizard.

You can use the Profile Wizard to save language-related settings to a file you distribute as part of a custom installation of Office. For more information, see Profile Wizard.