Office 2008 for Mac

Office 2008 Deployment

Deploying Office 2008 preferences

If you customize the Microsoft Office 2008 preferences, you can choose one of the methods that

are described below to deploy the preferences to users on the network. Before you deploy the

preferences, users must quit all Office applications. The preference setting changes are applied

when the users restart their computers.

Note You cannot redeploy an Entourage database after the user has begun to use Entourage

2008

Deploying preferences by using Workgroup Manager

You can use Workgroup Manager to deploy preferences and define privileges by user, by group,

or by computer and to perform a broad range of other workgroup management functions. It is

well suited for deploying preferences either before or after users begin to work with Office 2008

because you can manage individual preferences in a .plist file without disrupting other settings in

the same file. Workgroup Manager does not deploy entire .plist files; instead, it updates .plist files

on users' computers by writing individual key/value pair.

When you customize preferences, the customized .plist files are stored in the home folder of the

administrator account that you used to log in for that session. When you are ready to deploy these

customized preferences, you must log in with that same administrator account because

Workgroup Manager deploys the preference settings of the administrator who is currently

logged in.

There are some limitations in the way that Office 2008 works with Workgroup Manager:

• Office 2008 preferences and settings that are not stored in .plist files cannot be

managed by using Workgroup Manager. In particular, Workgroup Manager cannot

deploy many of the Entourage preferences because most of them are stored in the

Entourage database for each identity instead of in .plist files.

• Office 2008 does not provide preference manifest (.manifest) files; therefore, it cannot

use Workgroup Manager functionality that requires this type of file.

For information about Workgroup Manager, see Client Management

in the Mac OS X Server

area of the Apple Web site (www.apple.com/server). For detailed information about managing

preferences with Workgroup Manager, see the Mac OS X Server User Management

documentation available for download from the Apple Web site

(www.apple.com/server/documentation).