The first step in deploying Microsoft Office 2008 in a corporate environment is to create a network installation point. To do this, you copy all of the source files from the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac CD to a shared location on your network. Then you deploy Office to users from this installation point.
For more information about the different deployment methods that you can use for deploying Office 2008 to your user environment, see Deployment methods for Office 2008 in the Office 2008 Planning section.
Create a default Office 2008 installation image on the network installation point
Prepare a computer on the network for the network installation point.
If the computer is currently running the Classic environment (Mac OS 9), switch to Mac OS X, and then quit the Classic environment.
Turn off virus protection software, and quit any applications that are running.
Back up any existing Entourage identity folders from /Users/username/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office<version>Identities/ in one of the following ways:
Create and deploy a script for renaming the existing Entourage identities on each computer.
If you are in a relatively small setup environment, you can instruct users to back up the Entourage identities that are stored in /Users/username/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office<version> Identities/folderName and copy them to another location on their computers.
Note After you have deployed the Office 2008 applications, users can import information from their previous identities. For information on how to import from identities, see Entourage 2008 Help.
Remove any Dock icons for Office applications.
Insert the Office 2008 DVD into your DVD drive.
Copy the .mpkg file from the DVD to a shared location on the network.
You can now deploy Office 2008 applications to users from this installation point. For more information about deploying Office 2008, see the following topics in the Office 2008 Deployment section:
