Deploying Office 2003 in a Windows Terminal Services Environment | Microsoft Office 2003 Editions Resource Kit (Pro-Resource Kit)

Unlike with previous versions of Microsoft Office, installing Microsoft Office 2003 to a Terminal Services–enabled computer is not much different than installing Office to a non-Terminal Services–enabled computer. Before installing Office in this environment, however, the administrator needs to perform some tasks relating to how Terminal Services was installed.

Installing Office 2003 on a Terminal Services–enabled computer

Before you install Office to a computer that is enabled with Terminal Services, it is very important that you check to make sure that specific operating modes of Terminal Services were enabled when Terminal Services Setup was run, including the following:

The installation of Terminal Services must have been installed to use Application Server mode.
Terminal Services must be enabled and running on the server before installation of Office 2003 begins.
For Microsoft Windows 2000 servers, Windows 2000 compatibility mode should be selected to retain a locked-down installation.
Once you have checked for these modes, you are ready to install Office 2003.

To install Office 2003 on a Terminal Services–enabled server

Open Control Panel.
Run the Add/Remove Programs utility.
Click Add New Programs (left-hand pane).
Click CD or Floppy.
Insert the Office 2003 CD into the CD-ROM drive, and then click Next.

If needed, browse for the Office 2003 Setup program (Setup.exe) and select it, then click OK.

or

If you are installing from an administrative installation point, browse to that location, select setup.exe, and then click OK. In the resulting Run Installation Programs dialog, add any command-line customizations you require (unless already specified in the Setup settings file (Setup.ini) stored in the administrative installation point).
Click Finish.

Customizing Office 2003 for a Terminal Services installation

Customizing Office 2003 for a Terminal Services–enabled installation is possible, but you need to first understand the differences between how Office runs with a Terminal Services–enabled operating system versus one that is not enabled as such.

By default, almost all features in Office 2003 are enabled and installed as part of the installation. This helps reduce the number of subsequent application or feature installations an administrator might need to perform for users. Because Office, by default, is installed in a locked-down configuration, users cannot perform installations (like adding a feature), because they cannot write to the registry or application and system folders. Therefore, it is recommended to install all the applications and available features to minimize the need for further installations by the administrator.

As part of an installation to a Terminal Services–enabled system, some specific features are disabled by default because of their high bandwidth requirements for network and dial-up users. For instance, animations, sounds, and high-resolution graphics are disabled; or, in the case of high-resolution graphics, substituted with lower-resolution graphics.

To determine which settings are enabled or disabled, you can attempt to install Office to a properly configured Terminal Services–enabled server and examine the feature installation options during the installation. This will give you a baseline of what features are installed. Then, if you need to install many Terminal Services–enabled systems, you can create a transform using the Custom Installation Wizard and set the appropriate settings you want to use.

Note

Any features you set to Install on Demand will be ignored and installed as Run from My Computer. Also, by default, installations to Terminal Services–enabled systems will always install the low-resolution graphics for splash screens.

Though you can create a transform for use with deployment of Office 2003, the majority of settings configured for installation are by default optimized for a Terminal Services-enabled system. Also, since most installations of this type are performed in a server farm or within a controlled environment, the creation and use of transforms is not as necessary as with distributed-client system scenarios.

When creating transforms for use with Terminal Services–enabled systems, it is highly recommended that you not enable features that are disabled or set to Not Available. If you expect to deploy Office 2003 to more than two or three Terminal Services-enabled systems, creating a transform is worthwhile, especially if there are several customizations. See Chapter 4, “Customizing Office 2003” for more information about creating transforms for use with Office.