Office 2007 upgrade silent install?

arwes

I'm in a bit of a stupid situation at my office. Our insurance software doesn't play nice at all with anything under Office 2007 (random normal.dot problems every day) so my boss gave the board members a lowball option of $250 per user to upgrade. Instead of getting a volume license, I'm looking at about 120 Office 2007 Upgrade boxes in my server room. Is there any way to do a silent install on 2007 Upgrade? I was hoping to use WPKG but I don't see anything for the Upgrade version, and I definitely don't have time to sit at every workstation.

dynamik

I believe you just copy the files off a disc to a network share, from the command line, run setup with the /admin switch to create an msp file, and then run the actual setup with the /adminfile switch on the machines you want to install it on.

\\server\office2007\setup /admin

\\server\office2007\setup /adminfile \\server\office2007\deployment\whatever.msp

The paths are up to you. I'm not sure if that'll work with an upgrade, but that's worth a shot.

Edit: You might want to check out the deployment toolkit as well: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3bd8561f-77ac-4400-a0c1-fe871c461a89&displaylang=en&tm

aordal

Office 2k7 deployment is super easy. Like Dynamik said just copy the install files off a disc onto your local machine then open up a cmd and run setup.exe /admin which launches a GUI. This allows you to setup all your prefences (silent, cd key, security etc..) then save it to a .msp file.

If you save the .msp file into the Updates folder you don't need to specify an installation path. Then download service pack 1 and extract the files (they will be .msp) into that same Updates folder. Then throw that whole install folder up on a network drive somewhere and tell everyone to go there and double click Setup.exe right from the server.

The beauty of Office 2k7 is that it will cache all the info to C:\MSO prior to executing the install so that way they installs arent actually running from the server. And if you save your .msp files into the Updates folder it will automagically parse that folder and apply your settings and updates.

Now if you don't want your users going to the server and double clicking that setup.exe file you may get into a logon script that only runs 1 time or some other deployment method (I personally use SCCM which is the successor to SMS in our company).

arwes

Well the Office Customization Tool isn't gonna work. We've got retail copies and the OCT won't run unless you have a volume license copy (it looks for an Admin folder, and there isn't any on the retail disks).

dynamik

You're supposed to copy the files locally or to a share. It's probably trying to create a folder and failing for obvious reasons.

arwes

I created a share on my file server and ran the \\server-name\Office07 setup /admin and get this message:

Files necessary to run the Office Customization Tool were not found. Run Setup from the installation point of a qualifying product.

Looked further and the OCT requires either Office 07 Enterprise or a volume license copy. Also, if you have a MSDN copy it counts as a retail version as well.

dynamik

Weird, looks like you're right.

Maybe create a zap file with group policy or use psexec in a script.

File types that you use with Group Policy Software Installation: Group Policy

PsExec

sprkymrk

dynamik wrote: »

Weird, looks like you're right.

Maybe create a zap file with group policy or use psexec in a script.

File types that you use with Group Policy Software Installation: Group Policy

PsExec

His problem is still going to be that he can't use the same product ID on each install since he has 150 retail copies, each with it's own key.
It's been a while since I've installed Office, does it prompt for a key during install, or just afterwards for activation? If the latter, it wouldn't be quite as bad.

arwes

It's going to be ridiculous keeping up with all this. Looks like I'll need to get some computer literate employees to help with the installs. And a filing cabinet to keep the boxes.

dynamik

sprkymrk wrote: »

His problem is still going to be that he can't use the same product ID on each install since he has 150 retail copies, each with it's own key.
It's been a while since I've installed Office, does it prompt for a key during install, or just afterwards for activation? If the latter, it wouldn't be quite as bad.

You can actually install 2007 without the key as a trial and then add it later, which is why it's kind of weird they won't allow some sort of deployment.

arwes wrote: »

It's going to be ridiculous keeping up with all this. Looks like I'll need to get some computer literate employees to help with the installs. And a filing cabinet to keep the boxes.

My old company had this problem too (though with a significantly smaller number). I used a heat gun to loosen up and peal the licenses off all the cases and stuck them neatly on letter-sized paper

aordal

haha
Man that sucks. I guess I'm only used to playing with Enterprise.

arwes

Definitely sucks. Doing a unattended network deployment of Office 2007 would make a pretty good bullet point on the ole resume. Blah.