Office 2007 Action Pack Version Not GP Deployable?

We are in the process of working out the new methodology for delivering Office 2007 to the desktop via Group Policy.

We have a number of clients that are on Microsoft Licensing for their products.

Once we figured out how to set things up and run the GP install via startup script, we went to run an organization wide install for our company. Our Microsoft Action Pack (MAPS) covers this, so why not use the media that came with?

When we went to create our .MSP file for the logon script based deployment, we were greeted with the following error message:

Setup Error: Files Necessary to run the Office Customization Tool were not found. Run Setup from the installation point of a qualifying product.

Well, supposedly this is a qualifying product? We were able to deploy our MAPS version Office 2003 Professional via Group Policy with no issues.

According the the post at the Partner Blog Community: Office 2007 Retail version included in Action Pack? which is dated in February of 2007, this is a known "issue". The following link on that page goes to the Office public newsgroups where one would need to search for more specific answers.

We really are not sure what to say at this point. While the Microsoft Action Pack is valuable for us as a small company, the changes that seem to have come down as far as product licensing can be a bit puzzling to muddle through. This one, a retail versus OLP version for Office 2007 Enterprise, was not mentioned in any of the product documentation that we can see?

For those of us who run small but very busy shops, taking the time to manually install Office 2007 on the up to 10 systems as per the number of MAPS licenses is quite a hit for the whole organization.

Ultimately, before that change happened, those that utilize MAPS should have been consulted about the change. Whether by email, which we never received as far as we can see here, or even the Partner Action Pack Newsgroups, it would have been appropriate to ask those who would be impacted by any changes made.

Think MAPS Windows Vista upgrade version situation. From the MAPS Standard Contents page:

**In the United States, Microsoft will provide the UPGRADE version of the Windows Vista desktop operating system within Action Pack, which is consistent with how this product is distributed to our Volume Licensing customers.

For those of us who have had our MAPS for many years, there were no indications in any documentation to indicate we were receiving upgrade versions of Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional. They were indeed full versions, and could be installed as full versions as far as we understood our licensing and the EULA.

If anything, all of the confusion succeeded in clarifying many things about the Action Pack and our many misconstrued ideas as to what was included and how those products were licensed:

• David Overton: Clearing up some things about Vista, Office 2007 and the Action Pack
• Microsoft Small Business Community Blog: Do I have Downgrade Rights for my software that comes in Action Pack?
• Microsoft Small Business Community Blog: What? I need to uninstall Office 2003 and Windows XP as soon as I get my January Action Pack kit?
• Microsoft Small Business Community Blog: UPDATE: What Downgrade Rights are included in my Action Pack Subscription?

In conclusion, we are faced with yet another inconsistency. The Vista note above indicates OLP as the licensing model, yet we have Retail, or Fully Packaged Product, in our hands for Office.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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