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Office 2008 Deployment
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Deploying preferences using Apple Remote Desktop
You can create a special .pkg file specifically for deploying preferences. You deploy this .pkg file to
the home folders on users' computers by using Apple Remote Desktop or by making the file
available for users to copy from a file server.
For information about Apple Remote Desktop, see Apple Remote Desktop Administrator's
Guide on the Apple Web site at http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop.
Caution
When you deploy a preference file to a user's computer, the file overwrites all older files in
the target location, including all preference settings in those files. This could change user
preferences that you did not intend to standardize, and it could be disruptive to a user's
work. Therefore, we recommend that you deploy customized preference files before users
begin to work with Office 2008, or you should deploy only those .plist files that govern
settings for which you want to retain control (for example, the preference files for CEIP,
MERP, or AutoUpdate). On computers with multiple user accounts, you must deploy
preferences to the home folder of each user who has a separate Mac OS X login account.
Some settings, such as the mail server name, are stored in the Entourage 2008 database. You can
make changes to many of the Entourage database settings by using AppleScript and then
deploying the script to users. You deploy the script by using Apple Remote Desktop. To see the
specific Entourage settings that can be modified by using AppleScript, in the
Finder, drop the
Entourage application icon that is located in the Office 2008 folder onto the Script Editor icon that
is located in the /Applications/AppleScript folder.
Note Some Entourage 2008 preferences cannot be changed by using a script. You also cannot
change preference settings by deploying the database with new settings to an existing
Entourage user identity, because the new database will override the existing local data for that
user.
Configuring Office 2008 applications
Configuring Exchange accounts in Entourage 2008
Users can set up a Microsoft Exchange Server account automatically by using the Account Setup
Assistant, or they can set it up manually by typing in the account information. For users of
Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 ( SP1) and Entourage 2008 SP1, the Autodiscover service, which
supports automatic discovery of account settings, makes it easier for users to configure Exchange
accounts in Entourage 2008.