Precache the local installation source for the 2007 Office system

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Topic Last Modified: 2009-04-07

When you deploy the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Setup creates a local installation source on the user's computer — a copy of the compressed source files for the Office product that you are installing. Once the files have been copied to the user's computer, Setup completes the installation from the local installation source. You can minimize the load on the network by deploying the local installation source separately, before you deploy Office.

To deploy the local installation source by itself

1. On the network installation point, open the Config.xml file in a text editor such as Notepad.

   By default, Config.xml is located in the core product folder for the Office product that you are installing. For example, if you are installing Microsoft Office Professional 2007, open the Config.xml file in the Pro.WW folder.

2. Find the <LIS> element; uncomment the line by deleting the opening <!-- and closing --> tags.

3. Set the <CACHEACTION> attribute to "CacheOnly".

   The line in Config.xml should look like the following example.

   <LIS CACHEACTION="CacheOnly" />
   

4. Save the Config.xml file.

5. Run Setup.exe on users' computers; on the Setup command line, specify the path to your modified Config.xml file.

   Note that you must use a fully qualified path. For example: \\server\share\Office12\setup.exe /config \\server\share\Office12\Pro.WW\Config.xml

   where Office12 is the root of the network installation point.

Precaching allows most of the installation activity to occur on the local computer instead of over the network. Precaching also allows you to coordinate the upgrade to the new version. You can distribute the local installation source to groups of users over time and then schedule a simultaneous installation throughout the organization without over-taxing the network.

To take full advantage of precaching the local installation source, use the Setup.exe file from the local cache and only pass in the optional files, the customization patch (MSP file), and the custom Config.xml from a network installation source. You must use the fully qualified path of these files, and if the share names contain spaces, you must use quotation marks around the paths. For example:

"C:\MSOCache\All Users\{90120000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}-C\setup.exe" /adminfile " \\server\share\Office 12\mychanges \db_outlookonly.msp" /config " \\server\share\Office 12\Pro.WW \Config.xml"

where:

/adminfile specifies the location of the customization MSP file.

/config specifies the location of the customized Config.xml file.

Setup handles the creation and maintenance of the local installation source automatically. The default location is \MSOCache\All Users at the root of the drive on which Office is installed. In addition to installing Office from the local installation source, Setup also uses it to repair, reinstall, or update Office later on. If the local installation source is corrupted or deleted, Setup uses the original source on the network to repair or re-create it.