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I'm in the process of setting up a deployment share for Windows 7 and Office 2010 Pro Plus, using MDT 2012. My question involves the customisation of the Office 2010 install.

I've imported Office into MDT and I've successfully created a custom MSP file to tailor the settings to our business. However, I need to have a number of different customisations for different groups of users. For instance, our laptop users need Outlook Anywhere configured whereas desktop users do not. Basically - what's the best way of doing this?

Do I have to import Office into MDT more than once, each instance using a different MSP, then have the task sequence select the appropriate instance? It's just that this method seems extremely wasteful so I'm thinking that there's a more intelligent way to do it? Or am I coming at this from the wrong direction? Should I be looking at Group Policy to tweak the Outlook settings in this instance? I'm just aware that there are certain things that OCT can do that group policy cannot, so I would have thought that there must be something I can do in MDT.

I'm new to MDT so any pointers will be apprectiated. Thanks in advance.

Tony Blunt
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You would create the MSP files for each customization you need, then in MDT, in the 'Applications' folder, you would create a new application choosing 'Application without source files or elsewhere on the network'. Then you manually set the quiet installation command to use that MSP file using these setup instructions, and set the working directory and source directory to the location of the Office files. Compare the properties of the two applications, checking the source directory (on the general tab) and the working directory on the 'details' tab to get the paths correct.

Hope this helps,

(signature for disclosure purposes)

David

Windows Outreach Team - IT Pro

dwolters
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  • Hi David. Thanks. So can I ask - the original application is using the /config switch, so if I understand that link correctly, I can ditch the /config switch because it will use that default config.xml file anyway, and I just need to create a new folder, outside of the Updates folder to place the msp files in. Then each application instance will use the /adminfile switch to use the relevant msp. Is that about correct? I'll be able to test this tomorrow and will report back. – Tony Blunt Jun 26 '12 at 22:19
  • Hi David, all worked fine, thanks. Just one small thing - in the second application, the Source Directory remains blank and cannot be edited, but as long as the Working Directory matches, it all works fine. – Tony Blunt Jun 27 '12 at 11:14
  • @TonyBlunt Hi, sorry I missed your first message, but I'm glad to see you have it all working. Thanks for the correction on the Source Directory field. I had clicked in that field and it seemed active, but I didn't try to change the data. – dwolters Jun 27 '12 at 15:11