Office 2007 Enterprise Deployment - Name and Initials Prompt

[JacobP]

Hello all,

We're preparing Office 2007 Enterprise for deployment in our student labs
and are running into an issue. It seems that every new user that logs in is
prompted to enter their full name and initials. This means that every time a
student logs into a new machine somewhere they will see this dialog. I've
attempted to add the USERNAME and USERINITIALS properties to the installer
via the OCT, however that was unsuccessful as those properties are blocked.
I have also tried using config.xml in order that I be able to enter these
properties, however this was unsuccessful as well. The dialog still remains.
As follows is a copy of my config.xml file (with correct information
inserted in the PIDKEY, USERNAME, USERINITIALS, and COMPANYNAME fields).

<Configuration Product="ENTERPRISE">

<Display Level="basic" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes"
AcceptEula="yes" />
<Setting Id="SETUP_REBOOT" Value="NEVER" />

<PIDKEY Value="SERIALNUMBER" />
<USERNAME Value="USERNAME" />
<USERINITIALS Value="USERINITIALS" />
<COMPANYNAME Value="COMPANYTNAME" />

<OptionState Id="ACCESSFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //access
<OptionState Id="OUTLOOKFiles" State="absent" Children="force" /> //outlook
<OptionState Id="PubPrimary" State="Local" Children="force" /> //publisher
<OptionState Id="AceRepl" State="Local" Children="force" /> //access db
Engine replication
<OptionState Id="CAGFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //Clip Organizer
<OptionState Id="MSSOAP3" State="Local" Children="force" /> //SOAP toolkit
<OptionState Id="OsaNonBoot" State="Local" Children="force" /> //new,open
office docu lnks
<OptionState Id="ProofingTools_1036" State="absent" Children="force" />
//french
<OptionState Id="ProofingTools_3082" State="absent" Children="force" />
//spanish
<OptionState Id="WISPFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //handwriting
<OptionState Id="DocServicesFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //docu
update util
<OptionState Id="HTMLSourceEditing" State="Local" Children="force" />
//script editor
<OptionState Id="DocumentImagingUtils" State="Local" Children="force" />
//scanning,ocr,indexing
<OptionState Id="OISFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //picture manager
<OptionState Id="OSESupp" State="Local" Children="force" /> //sharepoint
support
<OptionState Id="QueryFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //msQuery
<OptionState Id="VisioPreviewerFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
//visio viewer
<OptionState Id="XDOCSFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //infopath

<!-- These are additionals from Enterprise RTM -->
<OptionState Id="GrooveFiles" State="absent" Children="force" /> //groove
<OptionState Id="OneNoteFiles" State="Local" Children="force" /> //onenote
<OptionState Id="RefIEBarFiles" State="absent" Children="force" />
//research explorer bar
<OptionState Id="WebDriveFiles" State="absent" Children="force" /> //hosted
webs
<OptionState Id="VBAFiles" State="absent" Children="force" /> //VB for
applications
<OptionState Id="OfficeDigitalSFiles" State="absent" Children="force" />
//vba certificates

</Configuration>



I've also attempted using a capture of the changes made to the registry from
before entering the username and initials in the prompt to after that, and
the changes made appear in HKEY_USERS followed by a long string followed by
\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo. I unfortunately cannot seem to
import these changes back into the registry of a clean machine either before
or after Office 2007 is installed (as an administrator user). Any help would
be greatly appreciated.


Thank you,

JacobP

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi,

Ultimately, this is a PER USER setting, not to be confused with a PER
MACHINE setting; it's supposed to be different for each user and they're
supposed to complete it the first time they log in. However, after the
first login they should never see the prompt again because it will roam
with their profile.

You have to watch out for Office because sometimes it will try to write
to a user hive at install time. This is bad design. It's to try and make
it "seem" more convenient on home computers where multiple users log
into the same machine. A classic case is where Office 2003 tries to set
CTFMON.EXE to run from the HKCU hive - this is extremely bad design and
can lead to problems when you go to upgrade to a new version. The HKCU
hive does not know you've changed software versions, so the old settings
will still be there!

If you don't want any per user settings - e.g. you want everyone to be
called "Student" you could set up a mandatory profile instead. You could
also force it to work like this by hacking the logon script. The logon
script runs in the context of the user, not the machine.

 

[JacobP]

Gerry,

Thank you for your reply, however our lab machines are not currently based
around a Windows domain. Each machine is somewhat standalone in that a user
account is created on the machine when he or she logs into the machine for
the first time. Because of this, even though this is a PER USER setting as
you say, it is essentially operating as a PER MACHINE setting. We do not
want the dialog to appear each time a user logs in to a new machine as it
will be an annoyance.

JacobP