Because of my work, i come across a very common phenomen: the windows SMB protocol and how it relates to latency on your network. Office documents, even more than other types, seem to be affected.
I found a real nice whitepaper by Microsoft. It also contains a lot of (client side) fixes/suggestions.
Here’s a nice example and probably the main reason for the delay:
When running Outlook 2007 for the first time, you get those annoying 3 questions.
Download the “2007 Office system (SP2) Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML)” (currently for SP2) and add it to your policies. Then:
User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2007 system\Privacy\Trust Center\ - enable the "Disable Opt-in Wizard on first run". User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office Outlook 2007\Tools | Options\Preferences\Search Options\ - enable the "Prevent installation prompts when Windows Desktop Search ..." User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office Outlook 2007\Tools |Account Settings\RSS Feeds - disable the "Default RSS Feeds" - disable the "Synchronize Outlook RSS Feeds with Common Feed List"
Today i had to deploy OEM versions of Office 2003 to around 20 systems. Some needed Office 2003 Pro, some needed Office 2003 Basic. And i didn’t want to do it manually. Normally with VLK’s it’s easy. Now, every computer has it’s own unique installation key. What to do?
First get the installation files to the clients (basic or pro). Then perform an installation. Too bad you must enter a key to perform the installation. Later versions of Office don’t have this limitation.
The following command will do the trick. Just use a valid product code from one of your OEM cd’s for the product you’re installing (in this case Pro). Don’t worry; Office will not be activated yet and the license will be removed later.
start /wait c:\install\office2k3_pro\1-main\SETUP.EXE /qb PIDKEY=12345abcde12345abcde12345
Then apply SP3
start /wait C:\install\office2k3_pro\2-updates\Office2003SP3-KB923618-FullFile-NLD.exe /Q
And why not… Office 2007 Compatibility Toolkit (FileFormatConverters)
start /wait c:\install\office2k3_pro\3-2k7compat\FileFormatConverters.exe /quiet /norestart
Now that everything is installed i’m going to remove the license we’ve used to perform the installation. Note that the GUID may be different based on what product you’re installing.
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Registration\{91110413-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9} /v ProductID /f
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Registration\{91110413-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9} /v DigitalProductID /f
So.. this is the complete script:
@echo off
@echo Install Office 2003 Pro with temp license
start /wait c:\install\office2k3_pro\1-main\SETUP.EXE /qb PIDKEY=12345abcde12345abcde12345
@echo Install Office 2003 SP3
start /wait C:\install\office2k3_pro\2-updates\Office2003SP3-KB923618-FullFile-NLD.exe /Q
@echo Install Office 2007 File Format Converters
start /wait c:\install\office2k3_pro\3-2k7compat\FileFormatConverters.exe /quiet /norestart
@echo Install Office 2007 File Format Converters SP1
rem checking this out later, has some "i agree" button i can't get around
@echo Install Office 2007 File Format Converters SP2
rem checking this out later, has some "i agree" button i can't get around
@echo Remove Office temp license
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Registration\{91110413-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9} /v ProductID /f
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Registration\{91110413-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9} /v DigitalProductID /f
exit
When a user logs in and the first Office application opens, it’ll ask to enter the license key and Office will be registered.
Office 2007 features a new toolbar in all applications, called the Quick Access Toolbar.
A user may add or remove their own buttons.
By default, the .qat files containing the user’s settings are saved in the following location in Windows XP or Windows Server 2003:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office
And for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 in:
C:\Users\usernameAppData\Local\Microsoft\Office
Here’s how to make sure this bar roams with the user:
Locate and then click to select the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars
If you use policies, select the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars
New DWORD value called “QuickAccessToolbarRoaming” with value “1”
regfile:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars] "QuickAccessToolbarRoaming"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars] "QuickAccessToolbarRoaming"=dword:00000001
Microsoft’s article on this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958062
If you want to customize your Office 2007 setup, here’s how:
setup.exe /admin
Then go through all steps in the customization wizard.
Be sure to have “completion notice” turned on and “suppress modals” turned off (this is to get to see errors, if any exist). Once you’re done with testing, go through the customization again to modify the MSP to disable completion notice and enable suppress modals. For completely silent install, you MUST set the DisplayLevel to “none”.
Save the resulting patch file in the same folder as o2k7 setup files.
Now just execute this command for silent install:
setup.exe /adminfile CUSTOM.MSP
OR
If you have Office 2007 Enterprise VLK, you could even drop the CUSTOM.MSP file in the “Updates” folder and setup will pick it up automatically (without any switches being used). For this, ensure you have WindowsInstaller 3.1 already installed. You can add in further MSP files (e.g. extracted from SP2 update EXE) as well, to have updates applied during install.