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Notes on Microsoft Office Setup/Installation

Keywords: MS Office Setup

The easiest way to install and setup Microsoft Office, (and the way that I am doing it) is to go to Microsoft's Technet Web site (www.microsoft.com/technet) and search in their database for the Network Installation Wizard for the Office 95 Resource Kit. (The actual file name is below) 

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/services/TechNet/Office95/netinst.exe

This program allows you to modify the SETUP.STF file that comes with Office to allow different selections for different circumstances and then generates a new STF (Setup Table File) which you can use the SETUP /Q1 /T NEWSETUP.STF file to run without prompting (Q1 is quiet mode).

While there, you may also want to search in their knowledgebase for setup command line options as there are a whole bunch of these to allow inputting the username, license info, admin install, etc. all from the setup command line.

When you install this way, the user will just see the file transfer bar as the program installs with only a cancel option. It takes about 10 minutes to run this from the network, so don't expect blinding speed.

The only thing you have to watch with this is that if you have done an administrative install to the network and you did NOT allow the choice of where the shared files can go, you will NOT be able to modify this to change them, ie if you want to install them locally on laptops and on the network for desktops, you have to have the choice or they will go into the wrong place.

I found this out the hard way when trying to create an STF file for laptop installs and the shared files would only be installed locally if there was NO network connection at all. Even if you installed from the CD, if the network was connected, the shared files would not install locally.

The only cure for this is to re-install Office95 allowing the choice of where to get shared files from. Then when you use this STF file as the pattern with the Network Installation Wizard, you can change the local files option inside the new STF file. You also cannot easily modify the STF files as they use a special spreadsheet format, and they are VERY complex also.

We use this along with a custom script we wrote to setup our computers with a standard configuration including installing about 10 applications at the same time. The biggest problem I had was in "timing" the different windows for keyboard response but I happened upon the solution in Marty's response to another seemingly unrelated question. Now I simply use a while !winexist child("parent name", "child name") with a timedelay(1) indented on the following line and an endwhile on the next line. The line after that is your sendkey information, ie sendkeyschild("parent name", "child name", "list of keys to hit")

This works like a charm and allowed removing most of the other time delays which allowed reducing the run time of the script from more than 30 minutes to 12!!

Since nothing is as clear as an example I have attached to this a section from the script which installs MS Internet Explorer 2.0 on workstations, long lines will be wrapped by this system, but the rest should be ok. 


;Installing Microsoft Internet Explorer
if DirExist("c:\program files\Plus!") != @TRUE then DirMake("c:\program files\Plus!")
Run("g:\win95\utils\msie20.exe","")
;loop waiting for Window
While !WinExistChild("Microsoft Internet Explorer V2.0 Installation Kit", "This will install Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 2.0.")
  TimeDelay(1)
EndWhile
SendKeysChild("Microsoft Internet Explorer V2.0 Installation Kit", "This will install Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 2.0.", "!y")
;loop waiting for Window
While !WinExistChild("Internet Explorer License Agreement", "I Agree")
  TimeDelay(1)
EndWhile
SendKeysChild("Internet Explorer License Agreement", "I Agree", "{SP}")
;loop waiting for Window
While !WinExistChild("Browse for Folder", "Choose the parent directory")
  TimeDelay(1)
EndWhile
SendKeysChild("Browse for Folder", "Choose the parent directory", "{DOWN}{DOWN}{RIGHT}program{RIGHT}plus{ENTER}")
;loop waiting for Window
While !WinExist("Internet Explorer Installation")
  Delay(1)
EndWhile
WinClose("Internet Explorer Installation")

Article ID:   W13453

Filename:   MS Office Setup and Installation.txt
File Created: 1999:04:15:16:54:08
Last Updated: 1999:04:15:16:54:08