Chapter 5: Installing Office 2003

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After you run Setup to create an administrative installation point or you copy the Microsoft Office 2003 CD to create a compressed installation image, you can install Office on users’ computers in one of several ways. Users can run Setup from the administrative installation point or the compressed CD image, or you can use other distribution tools that capture or reference the installation source.

Installing Office with Elevated Privileges

In the Microsoft Windows environments that support Microsoft Office 2003, different groups of users have different levels of rights and permissions. In these environments, default users have limited access to system areas of the computer. Because Office 2003 Setup writes to system areas of the Windows registry, a user must have administrator rights to the local computer to install Office 2003.

Users without administrator rights cannot install Office 2003. To install Office on computers where users lack administrator rights, you must run Setup with elevated privileges. After Office is installed, users without administrator rights can run all installed features, including installing features on demand, provided the initial installation was performed in an elevated context.

In organizations where users are not the administrators of their computers, there are three methods of elevating the Office installation:

• Log on to the computer as an administrator and install Office 2003.

• Assign, publish, or advertise Office applications.

  You can use Group Policy software installation and management to assign or publish Office 2003. You can also log on to the computer as an administrator and run Setup with the /jm command-line option to advertise Office.

• Use a software management tool, such as Microsoft Systems Management Server, in an administrative context.

Because all of the core Office 2003 products are installed as Windows Installer packages, any of the preceding methods grants users elevated privileges and allows them to install Office and any chained packages. When the initial installation is performed with elevated privileges, all subsequent installations—including install on demand and automatic repair of features—are also automatically elevated.

Caution

Setting the Windows Installer policy Always install with elevated privileges allows a user without administrator rights to the computer to install any Windows Installer package. The installation runs with elevated privileges, and the user has unlimited access to system files and the registry. Setting this policy leaves the computer highly vulnerable, potentially allowing an attacker to run malicious code on the computer. Using this policy to elevate an Office 2003 installation is not recommended.

Logging on as an administrator

If you log on to a computer with an account that has administrator rights, you automatically install Office 2003 and Office 2003 MUI Packs with elevated privileges. However, this method requires that all users have administrator rights when they run Office Setup or that an administrator visits every computer.

You can give users a temporary administrator name and password and have them use the Run as command to install Office 2003 or MUI Packs in an elevated context. If you create a shortcut to Setup.exe, you can include command-line options to customize the installation. To help maintain a high level of security in this scenario, you can write a script that contains administrator credentials and calls the Run as command. For more information, type runas \? at the command prompt.

Assigning, publishing, or advertising Office

You can also elevate the Office installation by using Group Policy software installation to assign or publish Office 2003 and MUI Packs. Alternatively, if you are not using Windows software installation and maintenance, you can advertise Office 2003 by logging on as an administrator and then running Setup with the /jm option. If you also include a Windows Installer transform (MST file) to customize the installation, use the /t command-line option to specify the MST file. For example:

setup.exe /jm pro11.msi /t office.mst

When you advertise Office 2003 in this way, Windows Installer shortcuts for each application appear on the Start menu, and a minimal set of core Office files and components is installed on the computer. When a user clicks a shortcut or opens a file associated with an Office application, Windows Installer runs with elevated privileges to install the application, regardless of how the user logged on. After Office is advertised, users can also run Setup from an administrative installation point and install Office with elevated privileges.

Like Office XP, the language packs in the Microsoft Office 2003 Multilingual User Interface Pack are Windows Installer packages, and you can advertise them to grant users elevated privileges when installing them. You must be logged on as an administrator when you advertise a package.

Resources and related information

For security reasons, applying an update (MSP file) to an Office 2003 installation always requires elevated privileges even if the original installation was performed with elevated privileges. For more information, see “Distributing Office 2003 Product Updates” in Chapter 18, “Updating Users’ Office 2003 Configurations.”

By using a Systems Management Server script, you can install Office in an elevated context. For more information, see the Microsoft Systems Management Server Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/default.asp.