Office 2003 GP Update

[Gilligan]

We have deployed Office 2003 with a group policy assigned
to specific computers.

There are updates for Office 2003 available.

How can I update the Group Policy and clients, without
them needing to reinstall all of Office?

If I create an upgrade software deployement, new computers
only get the files in the upgrade, not the original
package and the upgrade.

Please help! We need to patch but don't want to have to
reinstall everywhere. Thanks!

 

[Brian Desmond [MVP]]

Gilligan-

Check out http://briandesmond.com/blog/archive/2004/04/19/367.aspx.



--
--
Brian Desmond
Windows Server MVP
(e-mail address removed)12.il.us

Http://www.briandesmond.com

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Gilligan,

This is one of the beautiful things about Group Policy. All you need to
do - unless something has changed with Office 2003 ( I have not yet touched
it ) - is to update the Administrative installation of Office 2003 and then
go to the GPO itself and 'redeploy' it. That way the next time the computer
is restarted ( since you did this to the computer configuration side ) it
will automagically update.

I might suggest that you search this NG as this question is asked a lot.....

If you need more exact information please feel free to let us know. It is
really a straight forward process!

HTH,

Cary

 

[Gilligan]

Cary,
Thanks for the response. One more question though.

When I invoke the 'redeploy' will it only make the
necessary changes, or does it completely reinstall Office?

Thanks,
Gil.

 

[Gilligan]

Cary,

I went ahead and tested the re-deploy, and it does seem to
completely reinstall Office. Is there a way to just
update the computers with the patch instead of completely
reinstalling the latest patched version of Office?

Thanks.

-g

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Gilligan,

Sorry for the late response. I am not sure why you would want to not take
full advantage of what Active Directory can offer you in the way of GPOs and
the 'redeploy' feature. However, that is not for me to ask or wonder....;-)

I would suggest that you take a look at the Office Resource Kit as there
*should* be the instructions on how to do this. Here is an example of how
to do this with Office 2000:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=304165
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/journ/IntelliMirror.htm

Please note that I have not yet used Office 2003 in a production
environment. I might suggest that you take a look at the following links:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2003/
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2003/two/ch5/DepC04.htm

HTH,

Cary