Office Setup Program

Working with Office Setup Components

The Office 2000 Setup program, Setup.exe, installs Microsoft Office 2000. Behind the scenes, however, Setup uses the new Windows installer technology to perform installation tasks. Improvements in this process have made installing Office more flexible and more reliable.

Setup.exe bootstrap program

The executable file Setup.exe is a bootstrap program. That is, it performs a few preliminary tasks and then calls the Windows installer program, Msiexec.exe, to perform the actual installation. All command-line options documented in the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit are defined for Setup.exe, which passes appropriate options to Msiexec.exe.

You run Office Setup by double-clicking setup.exe. If Office 2000 is not currently installed on the computer, you can also run Office Setup by inserting Microsoft Office 2000 Disc 1 in the CD-ROM drive. When Setup.exe starts, it performs the following functions:

• If the Windows installer is not installed on the computer, Setup installs it from Office Disc 1.
• If Office is installed, Setup allows the user to add or remove Office features.
• If Office is not installed, Setup runs the Windows installer (Msiexec.exe) to perform the Office installation.

Office Setup automatically installs the Windows installer on computers running Microsoft Windows® 95/98. If you are running Setup on Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0, you must have administrative permissions for Setup to install the Windows installer components.

Note    Throughout the Office Resource Kit, the terms Setup and Setup.exe refer to both the bootstrap Setup program and the Windows installer program.

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Msiexec.exe installer program

The Msiexec.exe program is a component of the Windows installer. When called by Setup.exe, Msiexec.exe uses a dynamic-link library, Msi.dll, to read the Windows installer package (MSI file), apply the Windows installer transform (MST file), incorporate command-line options supplied by Setup.exe, and install the Office applications.

Important    Do not run Msiexec.exe directly. Instead, always run Setup.exe to perform Office installations. Running Setup.exe ensures that all system verifications are performed.

When Windows installer is installed on a computer, it changes the registered file type of MSI files, so double-clicking the MSI file runs Msiexec.exe with that file. You can change the default file types on your users’ computers to prevent them from inadvertently running Msiexec.exe with the Office MSI file, rather than Setup.exe. You change default file types by using the Folder Options command on the View menu in Windows Explorer.

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See also

You can run Office Setup interactively to install Office — or allow users to run Setup interactively. However, Office Setup offers you many opportunities to customize Office installations throughout your organization. For more information, see Customizing How Setup Runs.