Chapter 10: Maintaining Outlook 2003

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Maintaining and reconfiguring Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 after your initial deployment is made easier by using the Office 2003 tools. You may want to change information in the Outlook profile or update your deployment to implement new organizational policies, for instance by configuring auto-archiving options or setting up new group mailboxes. You have several choices for how to make updates, including using the Custom Maintenance Wizard or an Outlook profile file (PRF file) to change Outlook settings.

Updating Outlook 2003 by Using the Custom Maintenance Wizard

If you need to update your Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 installation, you have two main methods of doing so:

• Use the Custom Maintenance Wizard to reconfigure Outlook settings, save those settings in a configuration maintenance file (CMW file), and apply this file to your users’ installations.

• Update profile information in an Outlook profile file (PRF file), and distribute the file to your users. When Outlook imports the PRF file, user profile settings are updated.

Using the Custom Maintenance Wizard to update users’ profiles might be the best choice if you are doing one or more of the following:

• Making other changes to Microsoft Office settings at the same time that you want to modify Outlook profile information.

• Making changes to other aspects of your Outlook deployment in addition to Outlook profile modifications (for example, changing an Outlook setting).

• Making substantial or complicated changes to Outlook profiles.

This section of the chapter describes how to update Outlook 2003—including updates to Outlook profiles—by using the Custom Maintenance Wizard.

Note

Updating Outlook profiles by distributing a new PRF file might be the simplest strategy if you saved a PRF file with your users’ Outlook profile configurations when you installed Outlook, and if you are making minor changes. For more information about updating profiles by using a PRF file, see “Updating Outlook Profiles by Using PRF Files” later in this chapter.

The Custom Maintenance Wizard offers the same Outlook settings and profile configuration options that are available in the Custom Installation Wizard. You can, for example, specify features to install or uninstall, change Outlook options to a new default value, deploy registry key settings, choose to modify existing profiles (for example, to move users to a new Microsoft Exchange server) or add new profiles (for all users).

On the Resource Kit CD

The Office 2003 Resource Kit core tool set includes the Custom Maintenance Wizard, along with other Office deployment tools to customize Office application deployments. These tools are installed by default when you run the Office Resource Kit Setup program. For more information, see Appendix A, “Toolbox.”

The Custom Maintenance Wizard is run from users’ computers, and when it runs, it applies a customized CMW file to the client computer. Note that this behavior is different from the Custom Installation Wizard, which uses a transform to apply customizations during Setup.

Updating an Outlook installation in the Custom Maintenance Wizard

You can use the Custom Maintenance Wizard to update an Outlook installation after you have deployed Outlook. The Outlook customization pages in the Custom Maintenance Wizard are identical to those in the Custom Installation Wizard. (Note, however, that you cannot include an Office profile settings file (OPS file) in the Custom Maintenance Wizard to define Office settings.)

The following procedure shows how you might use the Custom Maintenance Wizard to change users’ default delivery location for messages from a PST file to an Exchange server.

To change the default message delivery location to users’ Exchange server

1. In the Custom Maintenance Wizard, on the Outlook: Customize Default Profile page, click Modify Profile, then click Next.

2. On the Outlook: Specify Exchange Settings page, specify Configure an Exchange Server Connection.

3. Specify an Exchange server name.

   This should be an Exchange server which is likely to be available to users when they start Outlook for the first time after they update their Outlook installation. The correct Exchange server for each user will be located and updated in each profile when Outlook starts.

   This step will ensure that new Outlook users have the appropriate configuration as well as existing users.

4. On the Outlook: Add Accounts page, choose Customize additional Outlook profile and account information.

5. From the drop-down list, choose Exchange Server.

6. Save the CMW file and deploy it to your users.

Deploying the updated Outlook installation to users

After you create the CMW file, you deploy it to your users to update their installation of Outlook.

First, ensure that the Custom Maintenance Wizard executable files and the configuration maintenance file you are deploying are available to users on the administrative installation point (or any file server to which users can gain access).

Then provide a command line such as the following:

Maintwiz.exe /c UpdateOutlook.cmw /q

The /c option specifies the maintenance file to be applied to users’ computers. The /q option prevents dialogs from being presented to the users during the update.

Resources and related information

The Custom Installation Wizard offers a wide range of configuration options for defining and modifying user profiles. For more information about your options for configuring Outlook profiles, see “Customizing Outlook Features and Installation with the Custom Installation Wizard” in Chapter 7, “Deploying Outlook 2003.”

Complete details on modifying user profile information by editing and distributing a PRF file are provided in “Customizing Outlook Profiles by Using PRF Files,” also in Chapter 7.