Friday, September 5, 2008

Office 2008, stopping the setup assistant for each user.

This solution is meant for large deployments of Microsoft Office 2008.  This solution is assuming that you are re-directing the office preference files for a user.  You would redirect these files if you were using Network Homes on an OSX server or you wanted to specify settings for users with Mobile Accounts.  

If you want to stop Setup Assistant from running each time a user logs in....I had that too, really annoying.  If you check out the ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist you will see an entry for Completing the SetupAssistant.  I am now pushing this plist file out to all users, via WorkGroup Manager so they are not asked for the setup assistant anymore.  It works great now....

If you are wondering how I am browsing my plists for freely I am using a program called PlistEditPro.  I don't know how originally told me about this software, but it is AWESOME!!!  I am sending out more and more plist files to my users and this program really lets me edit and browse my plist files before I even get to WGM.  There is a free version of the software. http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/plisteditpro/
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3 comments:

Unknown said...

It seems that has changed in client OS 10.6. I do not see the preference you mentioned (referering to ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist"

Have you found another way to edit that on 10.6 clients?

August 29, 2010 at 3:43 PM
Jesse said...

new to this...how did you push out the plist file to all users in WGM? i've got a good plist file i want to use, but not sure how to push it out to the pref folder of each user who would log in...

TIA

-J

February 15, 2011 at 5:54 PM
Kunes said...

Jesse,

I have my handouts from my MacWorld 2009 presentation that explains how to do it and another handout that shows an example. Below are the links so you can download them.

There weren't a lot of changes between 10.5/10.6 server and client for preferences so most of the information is still relevant for the current configuration.

http://homepage.mac.com/ajkunes1/OSX/LAJ_AKunes_Presentation.pdf (Starts on the middle slide page 10 through the rest of the presentation, walks you through the basics and how to troubleshoot preferences via WGM)

http://homepage.mac.com/ajkunes1/OSX/LAJ_AKunes_Activities.pdf (Page 15 is an example of how to take an existing preference you create and pass it to a user's account so they receive it. The example is for managing a widget, but the same process would be used for deploying a preference from office.)

Hope this helps, let me know if you have other questions!

February 16, 2011 at 10:11 PM

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