Office 2007 Error – OutOfBoundsIndex And Office64WW.xml

We are trying to get Office 2007 installed on that standalone server that we installed BESx on (BlackBerry label) a little while back.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 Setup has stopped working.

An error occurred during the installation, and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 setup was unable to complete.

. . . OutOfBoundsIndex
ProPlus.WW\Office64WW.xml

The Check online button does nothing to bring up any possibilities for a fix.

In the Remote Desktop Services server’s event logs we found:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft Office 12
Date:          12/13/2010 10:55:32 AM
Event ID:      5000
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      TS-01.domain.local
Description:
The description for Event ID 5000 from source Microsoft Office 12 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

Office12Setup
{10120000-0F00-0000-0000--0000000FF1CE}
12.0.4518.1014
X
OutOfBoundsIndex
ProPlus.WW\Office64WW.xml

Searching for OutOfBoundsIndex (Bing search) brings up a lot of links to the _same_ forum support request on other forums which does not include an option.

After sifting through the above search results we came upon this forum post:

• Microsoft Forums: Office – Can’t install Office 2007 on Server 2003 64bit

That post lead us to this one:

• Microsoft Forums: Office – Can't install Office 2007 on Windows Server 2003 SP2 64-bit

In this post we found the answer to our install problem.

Since this particular server had Office 2007 installed and running in Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) prior to the BlackBerry Enterprise Express install, we had uninstalled it prior to running the BESx install routine.

Once BESx and the extra Microsoft components had been installed a block was set into the registry to not allow Outlook to be installed on the same machine.

BlockOutlook12: 1

Well, we need Office for Word and Excel without Outlook.

So, we edited the registry as follows:

BlockOutlook12: 0

We reran Office setup and it again failed.

So, we went ahead and renamed the registry keys mentioned:

However, the key did not exist in the second location:

We then ran the Office setup and were greeted with:

So, we entered our key and set the following for Installation Options:

After clicking the Install Now:

And finally:

We then ran Word and Excel to make sure they fired up as expected:

The final step was to verify that they were being properly served by TS RemoteApps:

And:

Good to go!

We now know how to get RDS/TS and Office back onto a standalone server running BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Outlook 2010 – “My Address Book Is Gone” Importing The NK2 File

How many of us have heard, “My address book has disappeared!” after migrating the user to a new workstation.

We learned the hard way in the past to migrate the NK2 file, or what is called the Nickname Cache, to the new workstation _after_ creating a new one in Outlook 2007 or earlier.

With Outlook 2010, we need to go through an import process in order to get those nicknames into the user’s new Outlook mailbox setup.

• Microsoft KB980542: How to import .NK2 files into Outlook 2010

To import .nk2 files into Outlook 2010, follow these steps:

1. Make sure that the .nk2 file is in the following folder:

   %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook

   Note The .nk2 file must have the same name as your current Outlook 2010 profile. By default, the profile name is "Outlook." To check the profile name, follow these steps:

   1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
   2. Double-click Mail.
   3. In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles.
   4. 
   5. The original Outlook 2007 file is shown above.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type outlook.exe /importnk2, and then click OK. This should import the .nk2 file into the Outlook 2010 profile.
4.  
5. Note After you import the .nk2 file, the contents of the file are merged into the existing nickname cache that is currently stored in your mailbox.

Note The .nk2 file is renamed with a .old file name extension on the first start of Outlook 2010. Therefore, if you try to re-import the .nk2 file, remove the .old file name extension.

Make sure to follow the profile name verification as the import does not work if that step is not followed. The Outlook 2007 file was named Default.NK2.

Also:

Our Outlook.NK2 file did not get the .OLD extension tied onto it after the file was imported into Outlook. We could tell that the file was indeed in there because typing a letter in the TO field of a new e-mail brought up _lots_ of e-mail addresses.

Obviously our client would not have been too happy if their address book was deleted.

Now, what happens when we want to move them from this system to another system whether with Outlook 2010 or newer version of Office has yet to be seen. Given that the above KB is a “Fast Publish” article, we can only hope that an avenue to move that nickname cache between Outlook 2010 profiles or to newer Office versions will happen.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

SBS 2008 – Outlook 2007 Cannot Connect To Exchange Error

We set up a new Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VM for a client this afternoon.

We then installed Open Value licensed Office 2007 Standard via a network share where an MST file with their settings and the service pack files are already in the Updates folder.

When we opened Outlook to set up the user’s mailbox we were unable to do so. No matter what we tried we kept getting a password prompt which would eventually lead to a Failed to Connect to Exchange error message.

Starting Outlook /RPCDiag brought no clues other than to indicate that Outlook was seemingly not even trying to connect. The dialogue did show DNS resolution to be working as the SBS 2008 server name showed up there.

Running Windows Update, which was by default tied to WSUS on SBS, did not resolve it. We needed to run the online Microsoft Update version, install MU, then check for updates to see the Microsoft Office 2007 updates that were available post SP2.

Once we installed the MU Office 2007 updates, we rebooted. After logging in we were able to get the user’s mailbox configured in Outlook.

SBS 2008 is up to date on this particular network. So, there looks to be an Office 2007/Outlook 2007 update that needs to happen in order to get the two of them communicating again.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

OneNote – No 64 bit Print Driver

On one of our Windows 7 RC machines we do a bit of online banking. We need to digitize some of the transactions so as of late we had been using the OneNote “printer” to generate the required Note page and then save to PDF.

While there are solutions that work and are free, some can be somewhat troublesome to install on Windows Vista and/or Windows 7.

• David Rasmussen’s Blog: ONENOTE 64 BIT PRINT DRIVER

It seems that we will not be seeing the ability to send anything to OneNote via the print driver on 64 bit OSs until the next version which should be released sometime next year.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Office 2003 Won’t Uninstall when Deploying Office 2007 via Group Policy

After verifying that the workstations we have upgraded to Windows Vista Enterprise took the operating system without errors, we initiated an Office 2007 Professional Plus deployment via their SBS 2008 server.

In this case, we ran into a bit of a struggle with the existing Office 2003 setup.

In this particular network, the client was migrated to SBS 2008 via the Microsoft method about a month ago. The SBS 2003 box has since been repurposed.

For some strange reason, the Office 2007 install routine was not removing Office 2003 which is its default behaviour.

We were able to make sure that our Group Policy deployment was functioning as it should because one of the 9 workstations refused to upgrade to Windows Vista Enterprise (previous blog post) so we fresh installed the machine and it took the Office 2007 deployment without a problem.

When we tried to manually remove the Office 2003 install via Windows Vista’s Programs and Features menu, we were presented with a request for the PRO11.MSI file with the path pointing to \\OLD-SBS\ClientApps\Office2003Pro\PRO11.MSI.

So, out came the handy Windows Installer Clean Up Utility that we used to remove any reference to the Office 2003 install. From there, we removed the shortcuts in the start menu and ran a GPUpdate /force on the workstations.

After a reboot we were in business with the exception of one workstation where the Clean Up utility was run after Office 2007 was installed on it. Outlook was taken out by the utility so we needed to run the Office repair to fix it.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Outlook 2007 Error – The account you added is not fully configured…

While setting up a remote Outlook 2007 for Outlook Anywhere connectivity with Exchange back at the main office, the Internet connection went down.

Normally, this would not present too much of a problem, but in this case the connection died just after applying the RPC/HTTPS settings in the Connection tab but before the authentication dialogue popped up.

The Outlook connection dialogue hung at that point. After forcing a close, we tried to run the set up procedure again, but we would receive the following error as soon as we clicked on the More Settings button:

Microsoft Office Outlook

The account you added is not fully configured. It might not work properly until re-configured correctly.

A bit of searching for the specific error turned up the following:

• MS KB252304: Error message when you start Outlook: "Unable to open the Outlook window," "No profile has been created," or "The list of Profiles cannot be loaded"

While the article does not have the above specific error, when we tried to fire Outlook up we did get one of the error messages contained in the KB article when Outlook was trying to start.

Method 2 in the KB was the solution to our problem:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate one of the following registry keys, as appropriate for the version of Microsoft Windows that you are using:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem

3. Delete the Profiles key under the Windows Messaging (Subsystem) key.
   To do this, right-click Profiles, and then click Delete. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.
4. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart Outlook.

Once we deleted the above indicated registry key, we were not able to run the account creation process via the Mail icon due to the fact that there were no longer any Outlook profiles on the system.

There will be a prompt to create one:

Outlook Profile Created

Once created, we could go on to put the SBS server FQDN in the Exchange server properties along with the user name and subsequently the Outlook Anywhere settings and have the user authenticate.

Once authenticated, the SBS server name and the proper user name were underlined as they should be and we were able to complete the setup process.

The user could then open their Outlook, authenticate and begin caching their mailbox locally.

When connecting via Outlook Anywhere (RPC/HTTPS), the logon credentials should be formatted:

• SBSDomain\UserName
• My very l0ng p@ssw0rd!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Outlook 2007 Cumulative Updates via KB 968009 Released - “Performance Patch”

A new cumulative update for Outlook 2007 has been released. This release will also be a part of the upcoming Office 2007 Service Pack 2.

The base article is here: MS KB 968009: Outlook 2007 improvements in the February 2009 cumulative update.

There are two Hotfix downloads indicated in the above KB article:

• MS KB: 961752 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961752/ ) Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): February 24, 2009.
• KS KB: 967688 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967688/ ) Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook-en-us.msp): February 24, 2009.

The first one has a large number of fixes included in it while the second one is specific to using keyboard shortcuts to cut and paste in a custom form.

We have applied the first hotfix since it is applicable here. The performance improvements seen in Outlook 2007 are tangible. Clicking through various high content volume folders is noticeably quicker as is the search feature for both contacts and for content within the folders themselves.

The first hotfix will require a reboot of the system even though we had Outlook and any TSRs shut down during the update.

Once the system came up after the reboot and Outlook was started, this is what we were greeted with:

Outlook 2007: Preparing Outlook for first use.

The above process did indeed take enough time to refill the tea cup and get a couple of needed phone calls in!

Make sure to have a backup of your PST/OST/Mailbox prior to running any Outlook updates!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac!

Windows Live Writer

Word 2007 - APA, MLA, and other Styles Built-In!

I started my stint in University later in life. The word processor of the day was WordPerfect 5.x, and I needed to write my course papers in the American Psychological Association format since I was studying Psychology as one on my majors.

Getting a document APA formatted in any word processor at that that time was mental gymnastics with some ability to template things. But, getting there was a lot of fun to say the least.

Those days are gone now:

APA, MLA, and other writing styles built right in

The APA and MLA (another common Arts major writing style) styles, and their particular formatting peculiarities, are built right into Word 2007.

If that is not an incentive to upgrade to Word 2007, then certainly the built-in styles plus student pricing for Microsoft products should be a clincher!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

SBS - Companyweb and Office 2007 Documents

When there is a need to setup document libraries for Office 2007 documents, the current SBS SharePoint V2 Companyweb site does not know what to do with them.

To get that fixed, David Overton has an excellent post: How to get Companyweb (Windows SharePoint Services v2) to work with Office 2007.

Take note that one will need to run the following on each workstation, XP or Vista, that will access the Office 2007 documents on Companyweb:

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Internet /v OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing /t REG_DWORD /d 01

This command is via David's post, but must be emphasized as the Office 2007 documents will always open in Read Only mode without it.

As per David's post which links to the following Knowledgebase article: KB 870853: Office 2003 and 2007 Office documents open read-only in Internet Explorer.

David, thanks for sharing that. It has come in very handy!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

New Acer XP SP2 + Office 2007 SBE = 1GB Microsoft Updates!

This has to be a record for us!

Microsoft Update is 1GB!

Included in the updates is Office 2007 SP1, Office 2003 SP3, SQL 2005 Express SP2, and a couple of other larger ones.

This is a new Acer TravelMate 7720 that has been downgraded to XP Pro SP2 with Office 2007 Small Business Edition installed.

The actual download volume may be a lot less depending on how the Office 2007 SP1 download comes down. In the list it is indicated at 697MB!

We have mentioned about our Workbench Bandwidth Saver before, however what we have discovered is that it is only working with XP loads.

Windows Vista seems to have its own way about getting the updates and that way seems to bypass the caching feature of ISA 2000.

So, what that means is we are not plugging in any Vista machines that will be delivered to client sites where they have WSUS installed.

The other option for us is to use the suggestion that Chris mentioned in the comments of the above earlier post: Import the registry settings for our WSUS server and wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow until the system has gone through all of the necessary install and reboot cycles.

We place the above wuauclt command into a batch file that is on our Technician's Thumb Drive and copied to the desktop on any system we are installing. A copy of the batch file also resides on the client's WSS Companyweb site along with a share \\MySBS\Company\Network Admin\ folder that we keep somewhere on the network.

This is the registry settings for Windows Vista to import:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"WUServer"="http://MYSBS-SBS01:8530"
"WUStatusServer"="http://MYSBS-SBS01:8530"
"ElevateNonAdmins"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000000
"AUOptions"=dword:00000004
"RescheduleWaitTimeEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RescheduleWaitTime"=dword:00000001
"RebootWarningTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RebootWarningTimeout"=dword:00000005
"RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RebootRelaunchTimeout"=dword:0000000a
"DetectionFrequencyEnabled"=dword:00000001
"DetectionFrequency"=dword:00000001
"AutoInstallMinorUpdates"=dword:00000001
"UseWUServer"=dword:00000001
"NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000000
"ScheduledInstallDay"=dword:00000000
"ScheduledInstallTime"=dword:00000003

Note that MYSBS-SBS01 would be your own internal or workbench server.

You could always export the settings from one of the Vista workstations on the domain hosting WSUS v3 that is to be used as an update source. If the domain is workbench based, or a new setup for the workbench, and no Vista machines have touched it yet then a vanilla Vista VM would work to at least connect to the WSUS v3 server and get all Vista related updates cached.

Here is a screen shot of a vanilla Windows Vista registry before importing the above settings:

Vanilla Vista install. No Windows Update Key

Once all of the install cycles have completed, delete the above imported registry settings, force a GP refresh, reboot, and the system should connect to Microsoft's update site with no problems.

For those systems that are going to be installed in a peer to peer or stand-alone situation, make sure to run "Windows Update" from the Search field and upgrade the system's update source to Microsoft Update to catch updates for Microsoft Office and the like.

Thanks Chris for the initial pointer. It looks like we will be using this method to update Vista as we go forward. We just need to figure out if we are going to install a separate WSUS v3 instance on the workbench LAN.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Office 2007 OEM Part Numbers

Here is a list of the common Office 2007 OEM single pack versions we deal with:

• S55-02515 Office Basic 2007
• 79G-01153 Office Home and Student 2007
• 9QA-01757 Office Small Business Edition 2007
• 269-14071 Office Professional Edition 2007

We tend to stick with purchasing the singles since the discount per copy when purchasing the three pack is only pennies. For smaller shops like us there is no sense tying up capital in stock that may sit on the shelf for a period of time.

If purchase volumes demonstrate the need for three packs, then here are the part numbers:

• S55-02516 Office Basic 2007 (3 Pack)
• 79G-01154 Office Home and Student 2007 (3 Pack)
• 9QA-01758 Office Small Business Edition 2007 (3 Pack)
• 269-14068 Office Professional Edition 2007 (3 Pack)

Up to date part numbers along with geographically specific ones can be had from the Microsoft OEM Partner site.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Excel - Clean Up the Div/0 Errors in a Worksheet

We are setting up some custom quoting setups in Excel.

One formula that we have is: D20/E20.

If nothing is in the respective cells we get an error: #DIV/0!

Excel does not like to divide by zero.

To correct the error, we need to use a conditional formula on top of the above. We use the following Macro to change all of the affected cells:

Dim rng As Range, cell As Range, fmla As String
Set rng = Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeFormulas, 16)
For Each cell In rng
fmla = Right(cell.Formula, Len(cell.Formula) - 1)
cell.Formula = "=if(iserror(" & fmla & "), """"," & fmla & ")"
Next

The procedure is as follows:

1. Click on the Office Jewel and then the Excel Options button
2. Find and check "Show Developers tab in the Ribbon"
3. OK
4. Click the Developer tab
5. Click Macros
6. Type a name: CleanUpDiv0 [Enter]
7. Click Edit
8. Paste the above Macro in between the Sub and End Sub lines.
9. Close MS Visual Basic (should save automatically)
10. Click the Macros button
11. Make sure the CleanUpDiv0 is selected and click Run

The Div/0! errors will now be gone!

A screenshot of a properly formatted macro in MS Visual Basic:

Excel Clean Up Macro

This tip comes to us courtesy of Escalus near the bottom of the page on the MrExcel.com site: #Div/0.

One can also bring about the same results in Excel 2003 via the Tools menu.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Office 2007 - Download Trial Versions

Need to try out Office 2007?

One need only go to the Office 2007 Try site and download a copy of the product needed.

Note that a Live ID is required. The site also requests registration information once you have logged in with your Live ID.

One can also download trial copies of the following Office 2007 products:

• Office Visio Standard & Professional 2007
• Office Live Groove 2007
• Office Project Standard & Professional 2007
• Office Publisher 2007
• Office SharePoint Designer 2007

The trial versions are good for 60 days from the date of the install.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Office 2007 Suite Grid - What is in what again?

It is a perennial question that all I.T. professionals get: "What is in what version of Office please?"

Here is a screenshot of the Office 2007 Suite product comparison grid:

Office 2007 Suites Comparison Grid

The original grid can be found here: 2007 Microsoft Office System suites.

Note that the step from Small Business Edition to Professional Edition is Microsoft Access. Since those are the most popular non-licensing versions we deal with, that is a good thing to remember.

Also, when selling OEM versions, we make a point of informing our clients that there is no accompanying media with OEM licenses and that it comes installed on a new system before the system leaves our shop. They can then order a copy of the media via a Web link in the license case for a small shipping fee.

Here is a link to our previous blog post on Windows Vista's editions: Windows Vista - Now ... Just Exactly What is in What Edition Again?!?

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Outlook 2007 - Stalled Send and Receive

This is what Outlook has looked like all day today:

Outlook 2007: Stalled Send/Receive

Nothing seems to have fixed the issue short of a reboot. Shutting Outlook down as well as killing its process in the Task Manager did not do it. Cancelling the Send/Receive and clicking on the S/R button or F9 on the keyboard does not always bring in new email either.

Given time constraints, a reboot has not been possible since the last one. We need to get some work done on this machine!

So, hopefully the reboot, when it happens, will fix it for now.

The machine that Outlook is misbehaving on is due for a significant component upgrade. So, the OS and all applications will be reinstalled to see if a start from OS Ground Zero will resolve the Outlook issues on it.

*Sigh*

UPDATE 2007-01-17: Tried ripping Office 2007 right out of the system and allowing our GP install to run fresh. Problem is still there after the reinstall.

There are a number of other workstations here that can connect to that Exchange profile with no issues. The one difference is the POP3 pulls that happen on the one workstation with the problem. Yet, the POP3 pulls are accomplished with no hang ups. Only the Exchange portion seems to get hung up indefinitely.

Service Pack 1 has been deployed via WSUS and all workstations have it installed.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Microsoft Office 2007 - OPK Kits For Free (3 Only) via MS OEM Site

Folks, the original Office 2007 Basic, Small Business, Professional, and Home & Student OPK kits that we could get through our suppliers here for less than $10 each are no more. That reduced rate was some sort of introductory offer.

The part number, if you can find it was: 269-11458.

The OPK part number that now has a royalty attached to it is:

• 269-13607 for Canadian English
• 269-13608 for Canadian French.
• Supplier search key words:
• Office 2007 OPK
• Microsoft OEM OPK
• 2007 OPK
• Basic SB Pro OPK

Our suppliers here in Canada have at least a few of the above key words in their descriptions. Part numbers and search terms may vary relative to your particular geographical/language area.

There is one other offer that one can take up via Microsoft's OEM Web site: Order 2007 Microsoft Office OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) Master Kits. Note that if a company is not registered with the OEM site, then one will need to complete the registration process before obtaining the kits.

A company is allowed to order 3 free copies of the kit before being referred to an authorized distributor to purchase the royalty based discs.

For those clients that insist on getting media with their OEM license, they can order a backup media copy from here: Microsoft Office system backup discs for medialless license kits.

NOTE: The client will be required to provide their OEM install key to complete the order for backup media. And, the offer expires 90 days after the purchase of their system or systems.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

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

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

PowerPoint 2007 - Still buggy?!? - Slideshow Hangs...

We were requested to put together a slide show for a client. We decided to take PowerPoint 2007 for a test drive.

We ended up with a 25 panel slide show with multiple images and themes. We created a soundtrack for it on the Mac that ran the entire duration of the slide show.

We set the transition times for every panel to 15 seconds. We set the proper animation sequences for all of the panels and away we go right?

After saving the presentation in both presentation and slide show format, we took it for a test run.

Well, the first slide shows up, the music starts, then the second slide comes in 15 seconds later as expected. Then, it just hangs there. The slides no longer change. The second slide just sits there. The music keeps running though.

Okay, go back into the presentation, change the order of the slides to see if it is that particular slide, regenerate the slide show and try again.

Nope. It didn't work. Build a whole new slide? Nope, same thing happens again.

We still had a hang at the second slide.

So, the next step was to go back and see what happened to the transition settings. Each panel was still showing the 15 second transition time with the exception of the second one. It had 456:30:00 as a time setting!

Um, just where did that come from?

So, reset all of the panels to a transition time of 15 seconds, regenerate the slide show, and sure enough, it worked.

This was not an isolated incident. That 456:30:00 number showed up again, randomly, over the process of building the entire slide show.

Buried somewhere in PowerPoint, is that strange time number that only shows itself occasionally.

So, we learned a valuable lesson. Make sure that slide show works as expected before sending it off to the client.

Oh, and the soundtrack will, by default, be linked in the presentation so one should make sure to have the soundtrack mp3 accompany the final slideshow.pps or slideshow.ppsx.

By the way, the end user does not need to have PowerPoint installed on their system to run the slide show. They only need the PowerPoint Viewer. It can be found here: PowerPoint Viewer Download.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Office Excel 2007 - Sort and Filter Data for Print

Sometimes there is a need to print certain ranges of cells that contain a group of data values.

A fairly simple procedure that bypasses the need to create a Pivot Table is to use the built in filter.

Take a spreadsheet that tracks the number of hours for a task or tasks over a given period of time. In this case the period is one year.

The following screen shot shows the group of data after sorting by the last name:

1. Once sorted, click in cell A1 to remove the A column highlight.
2. Click on the Sort & Filter button on the Home ribbon.
3. Click on the Filter option.
• A down arrow style button will appear beside each heading in row 1.
4. Click on the relevant data column's down arrow to find available options.
• The following screen shot shows what you should see:
  
5. In this case we are looking for people whose total in the last column is at or below the value of 10.
6. We choose "Less Than Or Equal To..."
7. The Custom AutoFilter dialogue window comes up where we punch in 10.
• The AutoFilter:
  
8. Click OK.
9. Print the results.

The results screen shot:


This is a simple way to quickly pull some relevant data from what can be a very complex spreadsheet.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Office 2007: Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage

We were helping a client get ready for a presentation. I figured it would be quick to see what the Office site had to offer for a template to simplify the document creation process.

A legitimate Office 2007 is installed on the client system, and this is what we were greeted with:

Templates are only available to customers running genuine Microsoft Office."

I can understand this. And, I can understand the need to validate the installed Office software once. No biggie right?

Not so.

Next paragraph:

The status of your Microsoft Office software is validated each time you download templates.

Microsoft, is that really a good message to be sending out to your legitimate customers?

I.E. "We are watching you". Not the exact verbatim message, but you get the gist of my interpretation of the message.

Why not validate once and be done with it. Most people can accept that. But, to be validated each and every time they visit the Office site to download something is going a little too far in my opinion.

Point of principle: Oh, and offering the, "Do not show this message again." tick box just doesn't cut it either. The repeated process is still there, OGA message or no message.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists