Perform an Office 2007 silent install

Hi folks,

We’ve received lots of install and uninstall requests from customers and evaluators regarding Microsoft Office 2007. Let me provide you with some installation tips and sites to check out for further assistance. First, let’s look at the basic installation differences between the earlier Office installations and Office 2007, extracted from What’s new in the setup for Office 2007.

Setup changes

• Earlier versions of Office used Msiexec.exe; Office 2007 has Setup.exe.
• Office 2007 has a local installation source; earlier versions had an Admin install point.
• Setup.ini was replaced with config.xml; it also handles command line arguments.
• The wizards for Installation and Maintenance were replaced by the Office Customization Tool (OCT).
• Group Policy system policies were introduced in place of the Office Profile Wizard.

How to set up Office 2007 for silent install

The earlier version of Office installation supported /a option for administrative installation for network/silent installation. Office 2007 has this feature as /admin.

Follow these steps to silently install Office 2007:

1. Open the Command Prompt and type “setup.exe /admin”.
   • This will present a customization UI; select your options.
   • This will convert this to a customization patch in MSP format (not MST).
2. Run the command setup.exe /adminfile <yourmspfilename> to make it install silently.
   • Make sure you keep the MSP file in the same directory as setup.exe.
   • If you can place the customized MSP file in the ‘Upgrade’ directory, you can directly run setup.exe which will take the file in turn.
   • Make sure you are enabling suppress Modals only when you have tested and ensured everything is working.
3. Now when you do the above procedure from a shared folder you are ready to kick-start the Office 2007 silent install with Desktop Central.

You also have yet another method to directly configure configure.xml. Relevant information is available on the sites below:

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490141.aspx
• http://www.msfn.org/board/Office_2007_Unattended_Setup_and_Fine_tun_t72392.html

Please leave a comment if you’ve found any alternative methods you’d like to share.