Need help with custom office deployment

[Ty Zucker]

At our school we have a computer lab with 21 computers each
running win2k and officeXP. Software installation was done
from an RIS image on our server running win2k server.

I've been very diligent with deploying operating system
patches through SUS. Now I'm getting around to managing
the office deployments through group policy to make sure
their all patched as well.

This all lead me to learning about custom office installs
using transforms with the tool from the office resource kit
because it allows me to deploy an office installation
without Outlook (these are all student computers with no
need for Outlook).

I think I successfully created a custom .mst file. When
trying to apply this .mst file to an office xp installation
through group policy - I'm unable to add the .mst file. To
be more specific, when I'm at the "Microsoft Office XP
Professional Properties" page in Group Policy software
installation I click on the "Modifications" tab and both
the "Add" and "Remove" boxes are greyed out. Obviously I'm
not doing something correctly. Isn't that the spot to add
a transform for a custom office deployment?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Ty,

Are you deploying Office from an Office Admin
point on your server or are you trying to amend an existing
copy of Office? MS Transforms (MST) files can only
be applied during an initial deployment. If you're
amending an existing deployment you'd use the Custom
Maintenance Wizard to create a CMW file.

======
At our school we have a computer lab with 21 computers each
running win2k and officeXP. Software installation was done
from an RIS image on our server running win2k server.

I've been very diligent with deploying operating system
patches through SUS. Now I'm getting around to managing
the office deployments through group policy to make sure
their all patched as well.

This all lead me to learning about custom office installs
using transforms with the tool from the office resource kit
because it allows me to deploy an office installation
without Outlook (these are all student computers with no
need for Outlook).

I think I successfully created a custom .mst file. When
trying to apply this .mst file to an office xp installation
through group policy - I'm unable to add the .mst file. To
be more specific, when I'm at the "Microsoft Office XP
Professional Properties" page in Group Policy software
installation I click on the "Modifications" tab and both
the "Add" and "Remove" boxes are greyed out. Obviously I'm
not doing something correctly. Isn't that the spot to add
a transform for a custom office deployment?

Thanks for the help! >>

 

[Ty Zucker]

Thanks this clears things up. I also discovered that when
deploying office through GP you need to click on "Advanced
publish or assigned" in the "Deploy Software" box to be
able to add transforms to a new installation.

Next question then, can a .cmw file be deployed through GP
or does it have to be invoked from the command line on the
client computer? If it can be deployed through GP, where
exactly do I add it?