The installation process for Microsoft Office XP has been significantly improved over previous versions of Microsoft Office. Along with an improved Setup process, new tools and enhancements to existing tools provide the most effective means for managing the deployment of Office XP within a corporate environment.Many improvements and corrections in this version of the Office Resource Kit are in response to top issues reported by Microsoft Product Support Services. The first thing you may notice is the number of changes made to core tools such as the Custom Installation Wizard, Custom Maintenance Wizard, and the Office Profile Wizard. The Office XP Resource Kit also includes several new tools, such as the Setup INI Customization Wizard and Corporate Error Reporting.
Several enhancements are visible in the latest release of the Custom Installation Wizard (Custwiz.exe), including the improvements mentioned in the following sections. There are several new pages available in the Custom Installation Wizard, but the following two pages offer advantages not previously available. Similar to the Office Profile Wizard, you can customize specific menu settings to either display or not display, and also to set defaults to these settings. Due to the increased demand for tighter security with templates, documents, workbooks, etc., the ability to set and configure macro security, ActiveX? controls, and password security is now available through the wizard. Several changes were made to the Custom Installation Wizard to make it easier to use - not the least of which was improvements to the names and descriptive text for controls and labels in the user interface. To help administrators enforce an installation state that a user cannot change, the Not Available, Hidden, Locked installation state is provided to curb the ability of users to change the configuration administrators have set for applications and their features. Due to new installation capabilities and requests from administrators, the following capabilities have been added to control how Office is installed. A feature of Setup.exe and Windows Installer allows previously installed applications to be removed and new applications to install using the same settings from the previous installation. Enabling the option Do not Migrate Previous Installation State, you can disable that feature of Setup.exe or Windows Installer. The option Disable Installed on First Use turns off the ability of Windows Installer to advertise an application on the user's computer with a shortcut. The option Disable Run from Network turns off the ability of Windows Installer to install applications using the Run From Network installation state for the selected feature in the feature tree.You'll need to see the online help for the Custom Installation Wizard (Custom10.hlp) for specifics about this feature. Visual Basic? for Applications is a sensitive component of Office, and as such requires extra understanding by administrators. See the Help available from the Set Feature Installation States page or the Specify Office Security Settings page of the wizard for detailed information. You can now remove files from a user's computer by using a transform. Previously, you could only add files with a transform. You can now remove registry branches, keys, or values from a user's computer by using a transform. Previously, you could only add them in the transform. There are several new properties you can configure. It is advised you read the document Setupref.doc available with the Office Resource Kit for information on all the properties you can use. Setupref.doc is installed by default when you run the Office XP Resource Kit Setup program.

