Upgrading from Office 2K to 2K7 on TS2003

[Phil McNeill]

Hello,

We have an existing W2K3 Terminal server used by about 100 users with
Office
2000 on it. We are upgrading to Office 2K7 this year and I need to upgrade
the TS install. I am wondering if there is anything special I'll need to
do
with that.

We originally installed Office 2000 using a custom transform file that
takes
care of things like automatically setting up people's email etc. Will
those
configurations stay in place if I just upgrade the Office suite, or am I
going to need to create a new transform file to be used by the O2K7
install?
Should I be uninstalling the old suite and installing new?

Tips, tricks, suggestions very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Phil

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Phil,

For installing Office 2000 on Terminal Server the use of a specific, Microsoft provided, Microsoft Transform (.MST) file was
required. For Office XP and Office 2003 you could create/use your own MSTs with the MS Office Custom Installation Wizard.

For Office 2007, Microsoft replaced the Customization Wizard with a feature set built into the Office 2007 Setup.exe, the Office
Customization Tool (OCT).

The OCT uses MS Installer customization 'patch' files (.MSP) rather than transforms along with Group Policies (GPOs) and Admin
Setting Files (.ADM) for the customizations.

While the newer tools are intended to help migrate existing settings moving from one version to the next, you're effectively
skipping a series of upgrade versions (Office XP/2002 and Office 2003) when moving from Office 2000 to Office 2007 (and some changes
in Terminal Server/Services). You may end up spending more time troubleshooting what did and didn't migrate than building and
testing a new installation. There are features in each app added and a number of those from Office 2000 aren't in Office 2007.

You may want to have a look at the MS Office Resource Kit to start with a trial copy of the product and build up a testbed to
develop your customizations. http://microsoft.com/office/ORK (The downloadable 'book' sections may be easier to work with than
reading it all online <g>).

Note, that you will need an 'Enterprise' licensed edition of Office 2007 to be able to use it on Terminal Server.

===============
Hello,

We have an existing W2K3 Terminal server used by about 100 users with
Office
2000 on it. We are upgrading to Office 2K7 this year and I need to upgrade
the TS install. I am wondering if there is anything special I'll need to
do
with that.

We originally installed Office 2000 using a custom transform file that
takes
care of things like automatically setting up people's email etc. Will
those
configurations stay in place if I just upgrade the Office suite, or am I
going to need to create a new transform file to be used by the O2K7
install?
Should I be uninstalling the old suite and installing new?

Tips, tricks, suggestions very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Phil >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[Phil McNeill]

Thanks for the tips Bob. The only reason I'd really want to do an upgrade
rather than a new install is to hopefully retain user settings that various
users may have customized. However, my experience with the upgrade on my
own desktop is that I pretty much had to reconfigure things to the way I
wanted them anyway, even though it was an upgrade.

We'll likely look at a fresh install on the Terminal Server.

Thanks for the reply.

Phil