Resetting Outlook to a first run condition

[Rusty at City of Surprise]

We have upgraded from Microsoft Office 2003 to Office 2007 on all of our
networked computers. If a user logs in to their system for the for the first
time after the upgrade and trys to start Outlook with out first starting the
Word application (as they have been directed to) Outlook will not open
correctly and request information such as Exchange server name ect. (which
the user does not have). The only way that I have been able to correct this
issue is to rename the user's profile, and then have the user log back in and
re-create their profile and start with the Word application before trying to
open Outlook. Older versions of Outlook had a fix that would reset Outlook
to a first run condition, and I'm wondering if there is a simular fix for
Outlook 2007.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Why do you have the dependency to open Word first? What kind of deployment
mechanism did you use?
By default settings will migrate unless you specify otherwise.

the /firstrun switch still exists.

 

[Rusty at City of Surprise]

I do not know why it is a requirement and it may not be, but I have noticed
over the years that if a new user starts and opens Microsoft Word first then
they do not seem to have any issues with opening Outlook. I know this was
especially true with Office 2000 and it was a known issue in the knowledge
base files at the time. When we had Office 2003 and Windows XP Pro this
issue did not seem to come up. I noticed this issue recurring with the
installation of Office 2007 so we issued instructions to all users to start
with the word application first, but some users did not get the instructions
or they ignored them and they were the ones that had some issues with outlook
not working correctly. We installed the upgrade with a customized office
install package that we created using the "admin" switch which imported the
Exchange server information, removed all older versions of office, and then
installed the new version. All systems were restarted before the upgrade and
after the upgrade to ensure that no open files could be in use.