3-30-09

Our web folks receive HTML emails from clients that do not render properly in Outlook 2007. This is a known issue & there is a work around.


(Background from the internet)

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses the HTML parsing and rendering engine from Microsoft Office Word 2007 to display HTML message bodies. The same HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS) support available in Word 2007 is available in Outlook 2007.

The limitations imposed by Word 2007 are described in detail in the article, but here are a few highlights:

no support for background images (HTML or CSS)
no support for forms
no support for Flash, or other plugins
no support for CSS floats
no support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
no support for CSS positioning
no support for animated GIFs

In short, unless your HTML emails are very, very simple, you’re going to run into problems with Outlook 2007, and in most cases the only solution to those problems will be to reduce the complexity of your HTML email design to accommodate Outlook’s limited feature set.

(Solution from the internet)

Outlook 2007 does have a way to render an e-mail using the built in browser (security-zone).
The method is:
1) Open the E-mail in it’s own window (double click)
2) Click the toolbar button called “Other actions” in the ribbon
3) Choose “View in browser”

source:
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/01/10/microsoft-breaks-html-email-rendering-in-outlook/

3-18-09

After upgrading machines to Microsoft Office 2007, we were not able to create new email profiles, getting a "The connection to microsoft exchange is not available." error message. usa.net is hosting our Exchange servers, so rpc is involved. If the machine had an existing email profile, it would continue to work, but we could not create any new profiles. Microsoft Office Hotfix KB961572 turned out to be the culprit. Removing the hotfix (even without a restart) solved the issue. Re-installing the hotfix would recreate the problem.

3-10-09

If you also want to add the Save As PDF functionality to Office 2007, you can add that into the deployment, as well.

Download the SaveAsPDF.exe file from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=f1fc413c-6d89-4f15-991b-63b07ba5f2e5

I saved it in the Updates folder of the network share with my Office 2007 install files, but you could put it on any network share.

From a machine with admin permissions to the Office 2007 Installer share, run this command:
\\ServerName\ShareName\setup /admin
This will open the Office Customization Tool.

Choose “Open an existing Setup customization file” & select the .msp file previously created for the Office installer.

Click on “Add installations and run programs”

Click “Add”

Enter the network path to the folder with the SaveAsPDF.exe file in it, e.g. file://servername/ShareName/Updates/saveaspdf.exe

In the “Arguments:” field, enter /quiet

Confirm that “Run this program after the Office product has been installed. (Recommended)” is selected.

Click OK.

Save the setup file & close the OCT.

Now when you run the setup program on successive target machines (using \\ServerName\ShareName\setup) , it will install Office 2007 and all of its updates, and the Save As PDF add-in, too.

3-9-09

I have successfully deployed Office 2007 on several machines using the following steps:

Copy the Microsoft Office 2007 Installer files to a network share.

From a machine with admin permissions to the share, run this command:
\\servername\ShareName\setup /admin

This will open the Office Customization Tool.

Choose "Create a new Setup customization file for the following product"
Product: Microsoft Office Standard 2007 (or whatever version of Office you are installing)

Configure the Office Customization Tool with your preferences.

Save your preferences (a .msp file) in the \\servername\ShareName\Updates folder.

Microsoft recommends using a file name that starts with something like 1_ to make sure this file will always be the first file alphabetically (if you add updates to the Updates folder).

If you are installing a customization patch in conjunction with Office updates, you should change the file name of the customization patch to ensure that it is installed first. For example, change Custom.MSP to 1_Custom.MSP.

On a target machine, run this command:
\\Servername\ShareName\setup

Office 2007 will be installed on the target machine (if you left the default uninstall preferences in the OCT, the previous version of Office is uninstalled first).


If you want to go 1 step further & install Office 2007 with its updates & patches, you can also do the following:

After Office 2007 is installed, use Microsoft Updates or WSUS to install all of the current updates & patches to the Office 2007 suite on the target machine.

Go to the Event log on the target machine and look in the Applications log for all Windows Updates messages. Note the KB number of each Office related update and go to www.microsoft.com/downloads and search for each KB number.

Download each update installer and then run each installer with this command:
Path\InstallerName /extract:Path
(Full instructions for this are here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc178995.aspx - look for the section called Updates Folder)

That will create (extract) .msp files for each Office update installer.

Place all the update installers & all of the .msp files in the Updates folder of the network share.

Now when you run the setup program on successive target machines (using \\servername\ShareName\setup) , it will install Office 2007 and all of its updates at the same time.

I'm finding this to take about a half hour per machine.

3-6-09

Due to the added security restrictions of Windows Server 2003, if you want to run an application on a network share or mapped drive, that machine must first be added to the Intranet Zone in IE.