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Profile Wizard

Overview of the Profile Wizard

Microsoft Office is highly customizable. Users can change how Office functions by setting options or adding custom templates or tools. For example, the sales department can create a custom template for invoices or a custom dictionary with industry-specific terms.

Users can change everything from the screen resolution to the default file format for saving documents. These user-defined settings can be stored in an Office user profile. Office user profiles can contain most of the customizations that users make to the Office 2000 environment.

The Profile Wizard stores and retrieves Office 2000 customizations. By using the Profile Wizard, you can create and deploy a standard user profile when you deploy Office 2000 so that all of your users start off with the same settings.

When you save an Office user profile, you create an Office profile settings (OPS) file. You can include your OPS file in a Windows installer transform (MST), and the settings are distributed when Office 2000 is deployed. You can also use the Profile Wizard to help back up and restore user-defined settings from one computer to another.

Note   If an OPS file contains settings for an application that is not installed, those settings are still written to the registry.

Office profiles and multiple languages

Office user profiles generated by the Profile Wizard are independent of the operating system — including operating systems in other languages. For example, an OPS file created on Microsoft Windows 95 (U.S. English version) can be restored to a computer with Windows 2000 (Japanese version).

However, Office user profiles are specific to a particular Office language version. For example, if you create an OPS file in the U.S. English version of Office 2000, it cannot be restored to a computer with the German version of Office 2000 installed. There is some overlap between language families. For example, you can restore a U.S. English Office profile to an English or Australian version of Office 2000.

This Office language limitation exists because the different Office versions include localized folder names for the folders that contain the Office user profile information.

You can customize Profile Wizard to capture only certain user settings, and not all Office 2000 settings on the computer, or to run in quiet mode (without user interaction) as part of the Office Custom Installation Wizard. You can also run the Profile Wizard from the command line.

When a user receives a new computer, you can use the Profile Wizard to preserve user-defined Office 2000 settings from the old computer. Run the wizard on the old computer to create an OPS file, and then store the OPS file on the network. After the new computer arrives, run the wizard again to configure the new computer with the previous settings.

Toolbox   The Profile Wizard consists of three files: Proflwiz.exe, Proflwiz.ini, and Proflwiz.hlp. For information about installing the wizard, see Profile Wizard.

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See also

Office user profiles are different from system user profiles. For information about user profiles in a particular Windows operating system, see the appropriate Windows resource kit.



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Friday, March 5, 1999
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