Supporting Users Who Travel Between Computers

Special Considerations for International Travelers

Because operating systems differ in their support of some languages, users who are traveling internationally can take their roaming user profiles to another computer only when both the source and destination computers use the same code page.

Note   You must have a consistent level of security in your operating system to travel successfully between computers. For example, if you are using a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 computer with 128-bit encryption capabilities, you must travel to another Windows NT 4.0 computer with 128-bit encryption in order for all of your security settings to work as expected.

Within the limitations of multilingual support in various operating systems, you can make accommodations for users who travel internationally. The following operating systems allow users to take roaming user profiles from one computer to another:

• Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 or Windows 95 or Windows 98. In this case, both the destination computer and the source computer must use the same language version of the operating system.

  – or –

• Windows 2000 Professional with support for multiple languages.

For example, if your organization is based in the United States, but your users travel frequently to Europe and Asia, you can install the English version of Windows NT Workstation 4.0 or Windows 98 on all computers available to traveling users. This arrangement allows traveling users to take their Microsoft Office settings and files with them.

Alternatively, if you do not want to use the English version of the operating system in foreign subsidiaries, you can install Windows 2000 Professional configured with the Multilingual UI (MUI). Traveling users can set the locale of their operating system, travel to any other computer running Windows 2000 Professional, and take their roaming user profiles with them.

If international users need the Microsoft Office 2000 MultiLanguage Pack to display the user interface and online Help in another language, install the MultiLanguage Pack on computers that will be used by traveling users. Just as with Office, install the MultiLanguage Pack on a per-computer basis, and install it on the same drive (such as drive C or D) throughout your organization.

Tip   When traveling users log on to the network, their roaming user profiles are downloaded to their new location. For users who travel abroad, it might be more efficient to set them up to use a local server at their destination, rather than downloading large amounts of data from their original domain.

Top

See also

If all traveling users have Office 2000 with MultiLanguage Pack, they can use the MultiLanguage Pack to run the user interface and online Help in any supported language. For information about the plug-in language capability of Office, see Overview of International Features in Office 2000.

Office does not automatically uninstall MultiLanguage Pack files. If a traveling user leaves behind a set of languages, you might want to delete the associated language files. For more information, see How to Remove MultiLanguage Pack Files.