Wise Package Studio, Part 8: Building an Office 2003 Generic Transform File
There are various ways to get Office 2003 on your clients. You can use a scripted installation in Altiris Deployment Solution, you can repackage Office 2003 with Wise Package Studio (not officially recommended), but you can also create a MST transform file.
What is a MST file?
The MST file is a text file that will answer to all the questions you get when you install software. Normally when we use software at home or on one computer we just install it. All the screens that appear will be answered and the software will get copied to the location where you like it.
When you have to do this over 50 or more computers, a mistake is very easily made, and it will take too much time. In that case you will no longer be a system administrator, but you will be an answering machine. Even when you create a installation guideline you will soon make mistakes.
The MST will help you in answering the questions you get from the installation dialogs.
And the answering file will be even better then you are. It will always give the same identical answer without making mistakes.
Every installation will be 100% identical. In the previous article we built the MST file with Wise Package Studio by starting the option Install Tailor. For Office this will not work. Our second option would be downloading a text file from the Internet and change that like we would have it. But then we need to learn all the options, parameters and functions inside it. We need a tool that can do it for us.
Happily for us Microsoft released the Office Resource Kit that enables us to build a complete wizard driven transform file. The wizard guides you through 24 screens that all help you build a customized Office installation. Every user where you install Office 2003 to, with the Transform file, will have identical settings. It is even possible to add the Outlook settings, so if you perform an upgrade, Outlook settings are detected, and converted to the new version.
This will greatly reduce the time you normally have to spend on an upgrade or a fresh installation.
Let's go through the creation of the MST file.
First we need to download the Office Resource Kit.
Click on the link to get it. http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/e/d/0eda9...
After you started the installation you have to agree with the license agreement.
Accept them and click Next to continue.
Select the Complete install, and click Next to continue. Now all the tools in the Office Resource Kit will get installed including a very nice MST Viewer.
Click Install to continue.
When the installation is finished, you can click OK.
Now go to start Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office 2003 Resource Kit Tools and select Custom Installation Wizard.
Click Next to continue.
Select the path to the MSI. When you have Office Professional without FrontPage that will be PRO11.MSI. When you have Office with FrontPage, it will be PROPLUS.MSI
Click Next to continue.
Select create a new MST and click Next to continue.
Give the location where you would like to place the MST file, and give the MST file a name. I keep the MS file in the same directory where my sources are. This will keep everything together.
Click Next to continue.
Give in the path where you would like Office to be installed. Office 2003 creates a subfolder Office 11 where Office 2007 will create a subfolder Office 12 inside the folder c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office. You may also fill in the company name that you need in Office. Click Next to continue.
Now you can select what you like to have in your default installation and what not.
This is very commonly used by administrators that do not want every user to have the application access. Now you can select the application and select remove all. The application will then not be in this default install. After that you can do these steps again and only create a custom installation for Access.
If you then going to deploy it you can use the default MST for every user, and the Access.MST for the users that also need access.
Click Next to continue.
Now you can click on Microsoft Office and install everything local.
Also you are now able to take functions out of the installation that you do not want to have.
Click Next to continue.
By selecting Configure local installation source and entering the serial number all the installations will be OK. If you do not enter the serial number every installation needs to be licensed on first usage.
Click Next to continue.
If you have an OPS file that contains user settings you can specify the path. This is usually only used when you have a Citrix environment with a mandatory profile.
Click Next to continue.
Now you can specify exactly how you would like Office to be on the client computer. You can configure items how you like them to be, or you can leave it as it is: Default.
In a normal installation you will not be able to customize it as far as you can here. Just take your time to set everything the way you like it to give your users, the best, pre-configured environment. I could mention all the options here, but then this article would be over 100 pages.
Click Next to continue.
In this screen you can add or remove files to the installation if you like.
Click Next to continue.
Now you are able to add or remove registry entries to your customized installation.
Click Next to continue.
Now you are able to add, remove, rename or move the shortcuts that are installed by default.
Click Next to continue.
If you have more servers that contain the original source for Office you may enter them here. The installation sources will then be taken form a different server if one server fails.
Click Next to continue.
Here you can specify security templates. When you need to use them you are now able to add them to the installation.
Click Next to continue.
Now you may add a command line to perform a task after the installation. You will be able to run a PRF file command that adds the exchange server to every user.
Click Next to continue.
If you have a PRF file that contains the Outlook settings, you can add it also here. If you select the option Use Existing Profile it will seek for a profile and when that is not found it starts a configuration wizard to help the user.
Click Next to continue.
When you do a migration from Office 2000 to 2003 you should select Convert Personal address book. If you are not upgrading, you can leave it default. Click Next to continue.
Now you are able to add various send/receive group settings for the Exchange server.
Click Next to continue.
This is your last opportunity to change anything. Click Next to continue.
Click Finish in the last screen to save you MST file.
And then you get the most important screen. The parameters screen.
Copy the script into a text file.
When you go to start Run, you can enter the line completely.
\\servername\Office\setup.exe TRANSFORMS="\\servername\Office\Office2003.MST
The line will do a complete customized silent install of Office 2003. That will help you very much in deploying it with for instance Altiris Deployment Solution.
Have fun with it.
Wise Package Studio, Part 7: Use Install Tailor to Create a Transform File
Wise Package Studio, Part 9: Packaging the WAIK - Windows Automated Installation Kit