Office: Performing an Administrative Installation (Setup /a) (122522)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 4.2
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 4.2c
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 4.3
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 4.3c
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 95
  • Microsoft Office for Windows 95 7.0b
  • Microsoft Office 97 for Windows
  • Microsoft Excel for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Excel for Windows 5.0c
  • Microsoft Word for Windows 6.0
  • Microsoft Word for Windows 6.0a
  • Microsoft Word for Windows 6.0c
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 4.0c
  • Microsoft Access 2.0
This article was previously published under Q122522

SUMMARY

The following information discusses how to perform an administrative installation (Setup /a) of any one of the applications listed above.

MORE INFORMATION

Before You Perform an Administrative Installation

The following conditions must be true before you install the application to the network server:
  • You must have read, write, create, and delete/erase privileges for the network directories in which you want to install the application. For more information, see your network software documentation.
  • You must be running a Microsoft Windows operating environment on the workstation you will use to install the application on the network. Note: Windows should be installed in a shared location if future users will run a shared version of Windows. You may install Windows on the hard drive if users will run local copies of Windows.
  • If you are installing to a shared Windows configuration, you must have full network privileges in order to update the shared Windows installation (with the OLE 2.0 .DLL files, fonts, and so on.) so that when the workstation installations are performed, these files do not have to be copied to the user's Windows directory. The application Setup program automatically updates shared Windows as long as you have write privileges to the Windows directory.
  • Users who share applications or Windows on the network server must log off. Any directories on the network server that contain shared components, such as X:\WINDOWS and X:\MSAPPS, must be locked from user access for the duration of the administrative installation.
Installing an application on a network is a two part process: (1) installing the application to the network server, and (2) installing the application to the workstation.

To install the application to a network server:

To set up an application on a network server, you must run the Setup program using the following command line

setup /a

from a workstation connected to that server. When you install the application on the server you must install it into an empty directory. Be sure that you delete all of the files and subdirectories contained in that directory. Be sure to move any custom files, such as company templates, from the application directory or subdirectories.

If you run Setup from the server itself, the Setup program displays a message indicating that it could not detect a network server and path for the application program directory and asking for the correct server and path. If you continue with the installation, all workstations that are set up from that network server will have copies of the shared components installed on their local hard drive. To avoid this behavior, exit the Setup program and then run it from a workstation connected to the network server.

To install the application to a workstation:

After you have installed the application to the network server using the administrative installation (setup /a), you must run the Setup program on each of the workstations. When you do this, you can choose to install the application to the workstation's hard drive, or to run the application from the network server (this option installs a minimal number of files to the workstation's hard drive.)

Removing an Administrative Installation

You cannot use the Setup program to remove an administrative installation of an application. You must delete the files and directories on the server manually. You can only run the Setup program in maintenance mode to do either of the following:
  • Remove or add components to a workstation -or-

  • Remove a local installation of the application

Upgrading a Server Installation

When you perform an administrative installation of an application on a network server, you must install it to a new or empty directory. This is necessary to avoid overwriting files that are required by network users. If you want to upgrade an existing installation of an application in a directory of the same name, you must delete all of the files and subdirectories contained in that directory (be sure to move any custom files, such as company templates, from the application directory or subdirectories). You can then install the files to this directory. Also note that with Office Professional, you should backup the Workdir directory before you attempt to install.

If you are updating an installation of an application that was installed as part of Microsoft Office, you will not be able to install the updated version of the application, using the network Office Setup. For example, if you installed Microsoft Office version 4.0 to the network server, you cannot install Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0 to workstations using the network Office 4.0 Setup (because it only knows about the version of the application that it installed, PowerPoint 3.0).

There is no way to keep the integrated setup of Office 4.0 when you update individual Office applications in a network installation. You must install the updated application in a separate subdirectory on the server, instead of in the Microsoft Office directory. If you install the updated application in the network directory of Office, the Office SETUP.STF file is overwritten, preventing you from being able to run Office Setup in maintenance mode from the workstation.

For additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

110187 Program Setup Runs Instead of Office Setup

Upgrading a Workstation Installation

After you have upgraded the version of an application on the network server, you must run the Setup program again on each of the workstations.

REFERENCES

For more information about Upgrading A Server Installation, choose the Search button in Microsoft Office Readme Help and type:

Administrative Setup

For information about creating and using setup scripts to create standard installations for groups of users, see Advanced Office Help in Microsoft Office Help. To display Advanced Office Help, choose the Advanced Office Help topic from the Contents screen in Microsoft Office Help.

For more information on installing Microsoft Office 97 on a network, see the Netwrk8.txt file located in the \Office folder of your Microsoft Office CD-ROM.

For information about installing Microsoft Excel on a network, see the file NETWORK.TXT. You can open this file in Notepad or any text editor or word processor. You can locate NETWORK.TXT either on Setup Disk 1, (the file is not compressed) or in the directory in which you installed Microsoft Excel.

For more information about installing PowerPoint on a network, choose the Custom And Network Installations topic in the PowerPoint Readme Help.

For more information about installing Microsoft Access on a network, choose the Network Installations topic in the Microsoft Access 2.0 Readme.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:8/16/2005
Keywords:kbsetup KB122522
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