Upgrading elements of Office 2003 to 2007 using AD / GPO

I currently use Office 2003 on my network that I deployed using a series of
AD GPOs. I have several ‘classes’ of user on the system - some have just
Word and Excel, others have Outlook as well, and some have the whole suite.
I need to, initially, upgrade everyone who uses Outlook to use Outlook 2007
but leave the rest of their office applications unchanged. Then I need to
roll-out an upgrade of the other applications, leaving Word untouched for the
majority of the users. Word can’t be upgraded for the majority of users as
we use a case management system that produces Word documents - this software
isn’t compatible with Word 2007 unfortunately.

Normally I would create an administrative installation point for Office
using setup /a, patch it with the latest Service Pack and then create a
series of .mst files indicating which elements to install along with the
licensing information. I would then assign the software to computers using a
series of OUs with different modifications listed in AD. Obviously I can’t
do this with the Office 2007 suite as this type of modification is no longer
supported.

After reading through various TechNet articles I can’t find a simple way of
achieving my goal of initially upgrading Outlook to 2007 and then rolling out
the other upgrades – as it seems that only one .msp file is allowed per
installation point.

If anyone has already done what I need to do in order the deploy Office 2007
I would be most grateful in hearing how you did it.

Thanks,
Tim.

You are asking questions way over my head, but one of them seems to be about
using Word '03 to open Word '07 files. There is a patch that you can put
onto the '03 machines that will let them work with '07 files.

I'm somewhat of a late adopter of new stuff, and I dislike Office '07 mostly
because the user interface is so radically changed. In any case, I receive
Office '07 files that I need to open with Word '03. I can't say with any
certainty that some formatting options are lost when an '07 file is opened
with '03, but I'm pretty sure that all '03 formatting options are retained
when the file is opened in '07.

Try this
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...444731033.aspx





"TimStokeUK" wrote in message
...
I currently use Office 2003 on my network that I deployed using a series of
AD GPOs. I have several ‘classes’ of user on the system - some have
just
Word and Excel, others have Outlook as well, and some have the whole
suite.
I need to, initially, upgrade everyone who uses Outlook to use Outlook
2007
but leave the rest of their office applications unchanged. Then I need to
roll-out an upgrade of the other applications, leaving Word untouched for
the
majority of the users. Word can’t be upgraded for the majority of users
as
we use a case management system that produces Word documents - this
software
isn’t compatible with Word 2007 unfortunately.

Normally I would create an administrative installation point for Office
using setup /a, patch it with the latest Service Pack and then create a
series of .mst files indicating which elements to install along with the
licensing information. I would then assign the software to computers
using a
series of OUs with different modifications listed in AD. Obviously I
can’t
do this with the Office 2007 suite as this type of modification is no
longer
supported.

After reading through various TechNet articles I can’t find a simple way
of
achieving my goal of initially upgrading Outlook to 2007 and then rolling
out
the other upgrades – as it seems that only one .msp file is allowed per
installation point.

If anyone has already done what I need to do in order the deploy Office
2007
I would be most grateful in hearing how you did it.

Thanks,
Tim.

Unfortunately that is nothing to do with what the OP was asking

"Jeff Strickland" wrote in message
...
You are asking questions way over my head, but one of them seems to be
about using Word '03 to open Word '07 files. There is a patch that you can
put onto the '03 machines that will let them work with '07 files.

I'm somewhat of a late adopter of new stuff, and I dislike Office '07
mostly because the user interface is so radically changed. In any case, I
receive Office '07 files that I need to open with Word '03. I can't say
with any certainty that some formatting options are lost when an '07 file
is opened with '03, but I'm pretty sure that all '03 formatting options
are retained when the file is opened in '07.

Try this
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...444731033.aspx





"TimStokeUK" wrote in message
...
I currently use Office 2003 on my network that I deployed using a series
of
AD GPOs. I have several â?~classesâ?T of user on the system - some have
just
Word and Excel, others have Outlook as well, and some have the whole
suite.
I need to, initially, upgrade everyone who uses Outlook to use Outlook
2007
but leave the rest of their office applications unchanged. Then I need
to
roll-out an upgrade of the other applications, leaving Word untouched for
the
majority of the users. Word canâ?Tt be upgraded for the majority of
users as
we use a case management system that produces Word documents - this
software
isnâ?Tt compatible with Word 2007 unfortunately.

Normally I would create an administrative installation point for Office
using setup /a, patch it with the latest Service Pack and then create a
series of .mst files indicating which elements to install along with the
licensing information. I would then assign the software to computers
using a
series of OUs with different modifications listed in AD. Obviously I
canâ?Tt
do this with the Office 2007 suite as this type of modification is no
longer
supported.

After reading through various TechNet articles I canâ?Tt find a simple
way of
achieving my goal of initially upgrading Outlook to 2007 and then rolling
out
the other upgrades â?" as it seems that only one .msp file is allowed per
installation point.

If anyone has already done what I need to do in order the deploy Office
2007
I would be most grateful in hearing how you did it.

Thanks,
Tim.

If you want to initially upgrade only Outlook and then later upgrade the
remaining apps, you can configure the Feature Installation States and Removal
Behavior in the OCT for initial and future configurations, just as you did in
the old CIW, and then use "Setup /adminfile path\file.msp" commands to
use the appropriate .MSP to customize the installation. Office 2007 is not
designed to be deployed directly via GPO but the alternate method is to use a
GPO startup script to "emulate" the process:

Office Customization Tool in the 2007 Office system
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc179097.aspx

Use Group Policy to assign computer startup scripts for 2007 Office deployment
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc179134.aspx

Hopefully this helps clarify things a bit!

--
TXGuy [MSFT]


"TimStokeUK" wrote:

I currently use Office 2003 on my network that I deployed using a series of
AD GPOs. I have several ‘classes’ of user on the system - some have just
Word and Excel, others have Outlook as well, and some have the whole suite.
I need to, initially, upgrade everyone who uses Outlook to use Outlook 2007
but leave the rest of their office applications unchanged. Then I need to
roll-out an upgrade of the other applications, leaving Word untouched for the
majority of the users. Word can’t be upgraded for the majority of users as
we use a case management system that produces Word documents - this software
isn’t compatible with Word 2007 unfortunately.

Normally I would create an administrative installation point for Office
using setup /a, patch it with the latest Service Pack and then create a
series of .mst files indicating which elements to install along with the
licensing information. I would then assign the software to computers using a
series of OUs with different modifications listed in AD. Obviously I can’t
do this with the Office 2007 suite as this type of modification is no longer
supported.

After reading through various TechNet articles I can’t find a simple way of
achieving my goal of initially upgrading Outlook to 2007 and then rolling out
the other upgrades – as it seems that only one .msp file is allowed per
installation point.

If anyone has already done what I need to do in order the deploy Office 2007
I would be most grateful in hearing how you did it.

Thanks,
Tim.

Thanks for the info TXGuy.

I presume that you mean to create a .cmd file that runs at computer startup
to install the software with the relevant .msp file as a modifier? Won't
that run the script, and therefore re-install the software, everytime the
computer is started though? Or is there another way to define a script in a
GPO that means it only executes once?

"TXGuy" wrote:

If you want to initially upgrade only Outlook and then later upgrade the
remaining apps, you can configure the Feature Installation States and Removal
Behavior in the OCT for initial and future configurations, just as you did in
the old CIW, and then use "Setup /adminfile path\file.msp" commands to
use the appropriate .MSP to customize the installation. Office 2007 is not
designed to be deployed directly via GPO but the alternate method is to use a
GPO startup script to "emulate" the process:

Office Customization Tool in the 2007 Office system
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc179097.aspx

Use Group Policy to assign computer startup scripts for 2007 Office deployment
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc179134.aspx

Hopefully this helps clarify things a bit!

--
TXGuy [MSFT]