The Sysadmins

A guide to deploying Office 2010 via group policy. There are two parts so a successful deployment. Firstly creating your configuration (.msp) file and secondly a simple batch file to install.

 

Microsoft Office customization tool

Microsoft Office customization tool allows you to edit the default configuration to suite your install requirements.

To load the office customization tool, you will need a copy of the full office 2010 install. Head to the command prompt and from within the same directory as the setup.exe type setup.exe /admin. You will be greeted with the welcome page which outlines what the tool can be used for. Move down the list and see which sections are applicable to your needs.

To point out a few of the more useful entries.

Licensing

Here is where you specify if you are using KMS or MAK to license your office product. If you select ‘Use client KMS key’ it will use the key V7QKV-4XVVR-XYV4D-F7DFM-8R6BM which tells Office it’s a KMS client (for more information on default KMS keys go here. If you are using MAK you can simply enter your 25-character key into the box. Select ‘I accept the terms in the license agreement’, change the display level to none and tick ‘suppress modal’ for a smoother deployment

Outlook Profile

You’ll probably want to set ‘Modify Profile’ and ‘Define changes to make the existing default profile’. Then head to the “add accounts” and configure the default account. Setting this up correctly can eliminate the need for PRF files in most cases, so you’ll want to pay special attention to this section.

If you have multiple Exchange Servers, you can put the IP/FQDN of a DC in the Exchange Server box and it will resolve the location of the User’s mailbox.

Writing the MSP

Once you have made all of your customizations, select file and save as from the top menu. From here you can specifiy the file name for your .MSP.

Install Batch File

Here is the batch file you’ll add to your GPO for installation. The installation seems to take around 10 minutes.

REM Check to see if Office 2010 is already present if so exits
if exist "%programfiles%\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINWORD.EXE" goto exit
REM Kills Winword Outlook and Excel if open
tskill winword /a
tskill outlook /a
tskill excel /a
REM Runs the setup file with the MSP created earlier
"\\server\share\Microsoft\Office 2010\setup.exe" /adminfile "\\server\share\Microsoft\Office 2010\Install.MSP"

:exit
exit

In the next part we will look at customizing the ribbon, default fonts and other parts of the GUI. Then how you can automate the config via a group policy script.