Customizing How Office Features Are Installed

How to Customize Office Shortcuts

By using the Office Custom Installation Wizard, you can customize the shortcuts that Setup creates for Microsoft Office applications. You can control what shortcuts are installed, and you can also customize settings such as what folder the shortcut is installed in and what command-line options to use with the shortcut.

On the Add, Modify, or Remove Shortcuts panel of the Custom Installation Wizard, the wizard displays all of the shortcuts that correspond with the features that you selected on the Set Feature Installation States panel.

Modify an existing shortcut

On the Custom Installation Wizard panel, you modify any existing shortcut by selecting the shortcut and clicking Modify. In the Add/Modify Shortcut Entry dialog box, you can make the following modifications:

• Target

  Change the application associated with the shortcut. The names in the list correspond to features that you selected on the Set Feature Installation States panel of the wizard, plus any custom files that you added to the installation on the Add Files to the Installation panel. You can also add command-line options by appending a space and a list of options to the target name.

  For example, to customize the Microsoft Word shortcut to open a Word document as a template, select <Microsoft Word> and append the /t option as follows:

  <microsoft word> /t "c:\Tools\Accounting Forms.doc"

• Location

  Change the folder in which the shortcut is created by selecting a location from the list. You can specify a subfolder by appending a backslash (\) followed by the subfolder name.

  For example, to install the Microsoft Word shortcut in the subfolder Office 2000 in the Programs folder in the Start menu, select <StartMenu\Programs> and append the subfolder name as follows:

  <startmenu\programs>\office 2000

• Name

  Change the name of the shortcut by entering any string.

• Start in

  Change the starting folder for the application by entering a path. The path must be a valid path on the user’s computer. If it is not, the user gets an error message when trying to use the shortcut.

• Shortcut key

  Associate a shortcut key with this shortcut by entering the shortcut key string in this box. Click the Help button in the wizard for a description of how to specify a shortcut key.

• Run

  Select how you want the application to run when the user double-clicks this shortcut. For example, if you want the application to run in a maximized window by default, then select Maximized.

• Change Icon

  Select a new icon for the shortcut.

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Add or remove shortcuts

You can also click Add to add a new shortcut for any file being installed by Setup. This step allows you to create duplicate shortcuts for the most-used Office applications on the user’s computer. It also allows you to create shortcuts for custom files or applications you add to the installation.

To remove a shortcut from the list, select the shortcut and click Remove.

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See also

You can use the Office Custom Installation Wizard to customize many aspects of your Office installation. For more information, see Office Custom Installation Wizard.