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Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit Home
 Deploying Office 2000
 Installing Office 2000 in Your Organization
 Installing Special Configurations of Office 2000
 Customizing Your Office 2000 Installation
 Behind the Scenes - Office 2000 Installation Tools
Office Setup Program
Office Custom Installation Wizard
Profile Wizard
Removal Wizard
 Overview of Tools and Utilities
Glossary
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Office Custom Installation Wizard

How to Set Options in the Custom Installation Wizard

When you run the Office Custom Installation Wizard, you first identify the Windows installer package (MSI file) that you want to customize. Then you can either open an existing Windows installer transform (MST file) (if you want to work with those customizations as a starting point) or create a new MST file.

Start with the MSI and MST files

After the Welcome panel appears in the Custom Installation Wizard, you identify the MSI and MST files on the following panels.

  • Open the MSI File

    Enter the name and path of the Office MSI file, Data1.msi, which is located in the root folder of the administrative installation point.

  • Open the MST File

    If you are creating a new MST file, select Do not open an existing MST file.

    – or –

    If you are modifying an existing MST file, select Open an existing MST file and enter the name and path of the MST file.

  • Select the MST File to Save

    Specify a file name for the MST file in which to save your customizations. You can save your changes in the same file you opened, or you save your changes in a new MST file.

If you plan to store multiple MST files in the same folder that contains the MSI file, give them unique file names. When users run Setup from your administrative installation point, the users specify in the Setup command line the name of the MST file designed for them.

Important   The Custom Installation Wizard is designed for use with the MSI and MST files included with Office 2000 applications and related products. If you use the Custom Installation Wizard to customize the MSI file of another product, some of the panels of the wizard might not appear and some of the Setup properties described in Help might not have any effect.

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Specify your Setup options

After you specify the correct MSI and MST files, the Custom Installation Wizard guides you through the many installation options that you can customize and records your choices in the MST file.

In addition to customizing installation options, you can also set default application settings by using the Profile Wizard and the Custom Installation Wizard together. For example, you can set the default file format for saving Word documents for all the users in your organization.

First, you customize settings in Office applications and use the Profile Wizard to record them in an Office profile settings (OPS) file. Then, you use the Custom Installation Wizard to copy the OPS file into the MST file. Setup uses your OPS file to preset the default options on users’ computers.

Toolbox   You can use the Custom Installation Wizard to specify that Setup runs the Profile Wizard separately, after Office installation is completed, to restore the settings in the OPS file. For information about installing these wizards, see Custom Installation Wizard or Profile Wizard.

Save yourself some time

Most of the time, the installation scenarios that you create for various departments differ only slightly. If you need to make several MST files that are almost — but not quite — identical, create the first MST file by using the Office Custom Installation Wizard. You can then use the wizard to open your customized MST file, alter one or two options, and save these options in a new MST file.

Many of the customizations that you can make by using the wizard can also be done in other ways. This increases your flexibility for creating custom installations.

For example, suppose that the only difference between the Accounting department’s installation configuration and the Engineering department’s installation configuration is a different organization name for each department to use. You can use the wizard to create a single MST file and then use a different Setup command line to set the COMPANYNAME property for each department.

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Record your changes in an MST file

After you click Finish, the Custom Installation Wizard writes all of your changes to the MST file. The original MSI file is never altered — so you can always go back to using the standard Office Setup program.

Note   Because MST files contain only the changes you want to make to the standard installation, MST files are typically much smaller than MSI files. If you add large files to your custom installation, however, these files are stored in the MST file and increase its size.

For a complete list of Setup command-line options that you can use when you run Setup by using your customized MST file, click Help on the final panel of the wizard. This topic also describes the format of the Setup settings file, which you can use to specify Setup properties or define the level of user interaction that Setup uses.

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See also

By using the Profile Wizard, you can customize Office application options and save them in an OPS file. You can then set these options for your users when you install Office on their computers. For more information about using the OPS file during Office installation, see Profile Wizard.
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  Friday, March 5, 1999
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