How to change default save location for all users

[support]

We have a new Office installation that we'd like to modify.
It was installed with a local admin account, but is used by
users who login from the network.

Network users can log in and use all office apps. However, we'd like
to change the default save location for all users (from the standard
documents folder) We can't seem to find the default preference setting
on the local machine.

Any help would be apppreciated.

 

[Prasanna]

Hi,

Goto Word Menu and select preferences. Under preferences select File
Locations. Once you select File Locations towards to the right side of the
Preferences Screen you get a option of changing the default location. Select
the file types and click on Modify and select which ever location you want
and click on OK.

Hope this resolves your issue.

 

[support]

Thanks for the note Prasanna. Unfortunately, we want it to make the
change for all users that may log into the machine.

If the user has already logged in, they can make the change. We want
to change the default location so that anyone that logs in will save to
the new default.

Make sense?

 

[Prasanna]

Hi,

It's a user setting which gets saved. So we have to do it to the individual
users.

 

[support]

Thanks Prasanna. Unfortunately that doesn't make sense. Even the Mac
Office Admin kit refers to a 'preferences settings file' that lets you
setup options per user. We just can't seem to find it anywhere (other
than the vague reference on page 81 of the resource kit at
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...E5F3/MicrosoftOffice2004forMacResourceKit.pdf)

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Disclaimer: I know nothing about administering Office installations. But I
do know where those settings are most likely saved. But I'm not sure I would
actually advise you do this, it just strikes me as possible. You would know
better than I whether these are the files the Admin Resource Kit might be
referring to, or whether the Kit suggests there is a different way.

User prefs are in the username/library/preferences/microsoft folder.

It *ought* to work to set them on your computer, then copy the right file to
all the other users (though people might get annoyed, cause you have to do
the entire file and will mess up their prefs, and do you have read/write
permission to mess with someone else's prefs folder?). I believe, though I
suggest you test it to make sure, that these are the most relevant files:

com.microsoft.Entourage.prefs.plist
com.microsoft.Excel.prefs.plist
com.microsoft.Office.prefs.plist
com.microsoft.PowerPoint.prefs.plist
com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist

Like other Mac prefs files, if you move them the programs will recreate them
with default settings on launch, so you can test fairly easily. Not sure
whether default save location is an Office setting or per-program, probably
per-program.

There's probably a way to actually open up and edit the prefs file (maybe
using a Resource Editor?), but that's way over my head and I think not
something to mess with lightly. Try Google on that one, if you want, most of
the people here are not so big on messing with the Unix guts like that.

Another approach--if people don't use the standard Documents folder at
all--might be to replace the documents folder with an alias to wherever you
want them saved, letting you leave the Office prefs as is. I'm not real
clear on how that works, but it's been discussed on these ngs.

DM