Additional Setup Resources: The Office 2000 Resource Kit

For advanced users or system administrators who need greater control over the installation process, the Office 2000 group at Microsoft has created a product called the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit, a comprehensive collection of wizards, tools, and documentation resources for Information Technology (IT) professionals who deploy, support, and maintain Office 2000 in medium and large-sized corporations.

The Office 2000 Resource Kit includes extensive instructions for managing several standard and not-so-standard setup scenarios. A showpiece of the kit is the new Custom Installation Wizard, a powerful tool that helps system administrators install Office 2000 in a variety of settings and configurations. (See Figure 4-3.) In addition, the Office 2000 Resource Kit covers deploying Office 2000 internationally, important compatibility issues, security, creating custom configurations by using policies and profiles, using the Microsoft Office Server Extensions, and managing intranet and Internet activities.

Extensive documentation forms the backbone of the Office 2000 Resource Kit. In addition, you get the following tools and wizards that help you deploy Office throughout your corporation:

• Custom Installation Wizard—a tool that customizes and manages the entire Office 2000 installation process.
• Office Profile Wizard—a tool that lets system administrators save their Office settings in an OPS file, which they can use in the deployment of Office 2000 on groups of computers.
• Office Removal Wizard—a tool that allows system administrators to selectively remove applications and tools from previous versions of Office that exist on computers, even after Office 2000 has already been installed.
• System Policy Editor—a tool that lets administrators set and distribute Office system policies, which are standard settings (stored in the system registry) that control how Office appears to users throughout an organization.



Figure 4-3 The Office Installation Wizard lets you fine-tune the settings of an individual Office installation or a corporate deployment.

• Office Language Version—a tool that configures an English language installation of Office 2000 to use local-language information.
• Custom Alerts—a mechanism for creating custom error and alert messages in Office 2000.

Although the Office 2000 Resource Kit isn't included with the retail editions of Office 2000, many advanced users and system administrators might want to employ it in their installation activities. To view an online version of the Office 2000 Resource Kit, complete with documentation and instructions for downloading files and tools, connect to the Microsoft Office Web site for the kit:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/

Alternatively, you can purchase a printed version of the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit with companion CD-ROM direct from Microsoft Press. For more information, check the Microsoft Press Web site:

http://mspress.microsoft.com/