Automatic Creation of Outlook Profiles & E-Mail Accounts with OfficeXP Custom Installation Wizard

D

David Akerman

Hi All,

I'm trying to automate Office XP installations from the server. This has
been mostly succesful, but I can't seem to get it to automatically create an
Outlook e-mail profile (with mail delivered to server, and an offline copy)
and e-mail account.

What I have done so far:

a) Used the Profile Wizard in the Microsoft Office XP Resource Kit tools to
copy my Outlook profile (we have custom forms and modified categories)
b) Used the Custom Installation wizard to create an MST file for MS Office
XP installation, using the Pro.msi in a share created from an administrative
install.
c) Modified the Group Policy to do and advanced assign & specified the MST
file.

This successfully installs Outlook (and other Office applications) with some
customisations (e.g. everything installed by default, customized
organization name, updated Categories from my modified profile), but it
fails to create a profile and/or e-mail account.

I have tried a few settings in the Custom Installation Wizard Customize
Default Profile dialog (modify profile, new profile, Apply PRF) to no avail.
Interestingly, I have used New Profile to set up profile details and save
them to a .PRF, then changed to Apply PRF, and the PRF is not applied, but
if I double click on the PRF file after installation, the new Profile is
successfully applied! So it seems like a bug in the Custom Installation
Wizard, maybe.

As an alternative, I have tried using the registry setting dialog to make
Outlook install this on first use (as documented in
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/four/outc03.htm step 11, before
shortcuts), but the registry settings are not copied either!

The only remaining think I can think of is to create a new MST file from
scratch with these settings, instead of trying to modify the existing MST
file, which I will try now.

Can anyone else out there shed some light on this?

TIA,

David Akerman
JADe
 

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