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Office Patcher can silently update admin installs of the mainstream Office CDs with the latest service pack and hotfixes.

Supported versions: Office 2000, XP/2002 and 2003.

Supported "subcategories": Office, Frontpage, Project, Visio, OneNote and Publisher.

Features:
- allows user to create an administrative installation from CD if no admin install exists for the relevant subcategory (this part is obviously not fully automated)
- if an administrative install already exists in the relevant subfolder it isn't created again
- by default, only the main Office CD is treated; the others need to be "unlocked" via an external answer file
- the answer file can also be used to skip certain subcategories (useful for example when you patched Visio before but don't want or need to patch it this time)
- silently slipstream the service pack and hotfixes you provide into the admin installation(s)
- for Office 2000: overcome "destination file doesn't exist" errors
- supports all languages

Subfolder structure:
OFFICE
FRONTPAGE
PROJECT
VISIO
ONENOTE
PUBLISHER

The OFFICE folder is created by default. You should only create the others manually if needed.
The updates for these categories go in a subfolder with the same name as the one for the subcategory but with an underscore in the front. For example: updates for FRONTPAGE go in _FRONTPAGE.
The service pack for Office and Frontpage needs to be placed in _OFFICE only; no need to have it twice.

System requirements:
- Windows 2000 or higher
- Windows Installer 2.0 or higher
- administrative privileges
- enough hard disk space

Quick how-to:
1) Log on as a user with administrative privileges.
2) Extract this package into a folder of your choice.
3) Place the hotfixes ("fullfiles" only) into the relevant subfolders; create as necessary:
_OFFICE
_FRONTPAGE
_PROJECT
_VISIO
_ONENOTE
_PUBLISHER
4) By default, only the first CD (Office) is handled; if you wish to update other CDs from the same package, create an answer file called OFFPATCH.INI and place it in the same folder in which the main script file resides. The answer file should contain the following entries:
OFFICE=
FRONTPAGE=
PROJECT=
VISIO=
ONENOTE=
PUBLISHER=
Add "1" (without quotes) next to those you wish to see handled or "0" (without quotes) next to those you want the script to ignore.
5) If you don't yet have an administrative installation of the package(s) you wish to update, have your installation CDs at hand; when the program asks if you want to create a particular source, insert the relevant CD and then answer the question with "y". Doing so, the standard administrative installation wizard will show; you can pre-insert your user information at that point if you wish. If you already have administrative installations, create the needed subfolders and copy your administrative sources into them:
OFFICE
FRONTPAGE
PROJECT
VISIO
ONENOTE
PUBLISHER
6) Run the program and wait till it's finished.

Known current limitations:
1) The Office version can only be determined based on the first Office CD.
2) There's no exclude list for unneeded *.MSP update files for Office 2000 and XP yet, so you may receive error messages for Office versions other than Office 2003. You can ignore these but it would help if you report the name of the hotfix that was being slipstreamed at that time.
3) A known issue with patching Office 2000 is that you may get errors about missing destination files. Office Patcher contains a list so it can work around that, but the list is not complete. Please report any missing destinations including the path as stated in the error messages.

This post has been edited by Tomcat76: Dec 18 2006, 03:22 PM

This looks like a neat project. I don't use Office on my personal machines but it will be nice to have this for workgroup/customer deployments.

Hopefully this project generates more interest

Anyway to make it so that when you slipstream the update, Microsoft Update will see the updates?

@TAiN: Thanks.

@ricktendo64:
Is there any way not to make it so?
One thing you may encounter is buggy detection on the Office Update site, especially with Office 2000. But everything seems to be OK lately.
There is one "problem", though: sometimes, Office Update may disallow you to do a quick install of a missing update via its web interface, telling you that "you need the administrative version of the update". This is not the case with the Microsoft Update web site, but Office 2000 isn't supported by it. So users of Office 2000 may need to download and install the full admin version of an update from time to time.

This post has been edited by Tomcat76: Aug 3 2006, 08:11 AM

I experienced that with Office 2000, and it ticked me off to no end.

Otherwise, good job Tomcat. I can keep hotfix lists up to date for this if you want (when it's released, of course).

the_guy

I was just bitching to a friend how we needed something like this...

So far, it's coming along quite nicely. I lost a bit of time trying to figure out how to specify the destination folder of an admin install up front -- I don't want to force the user to fill it in him/herself. I couldn't find any documentation on this but it's OK now.

Done:
- check for administrative rights
- create admin installs off the installation CD into predefined folder
- skip creation of admin installs if they already exist
- detect version of Office (limited to "OFFICE")
- overcome "missing files" problem with Office 2000 English (CD1)
- patch Office 2000 with SR1 and SP3 (CD1 & CD2)
- exclude Office 2000 SR1/SP3 from list of hotfixes to be parsed
- slipstream hotfixes for Office 2000/XP/2003 ("first CD" only)
- exclude PVMSO.MSP from being parsed

To do:
- service packs for Office XP and 2003
- hotfixes for subcategories other than "OFFICE"
- find out which *.MSP files should be ignored (hotfixes)
- find a way to detect already applied service pack to bypass error dialogs **

**Using /qb- or /qn rather than /qb as an install switch isn't workable. Those bypass dialogs messages, but, if an error occurs during installation, the installation will "roll back" without telling you (your only lead is the blue bar which moves to the left). So I have to use /qb.

OK here is what happens to me:
I slipstream Office SP-2 into Office 2003 then i slipstream all the updates, then i install it

Then Micro$h!t Update tells me i need to update Office... WTF i just slipstreamd them two minutes ago

Thats why i ask, M$ Update recognized the SP but not the updates

This post has been edited by ricktendo64: Aug 3 2006, 10:16 AM

Did you apply the service pack and the hotfixes to an admin install of Office 2003 or to a basic "CD copy"?

Admin install and i used the "Extract_Updates.cmd" and the "Office2003_Slipstreamer.cmd" tools from MSFN

Then i switched to Open Office and never looked back

This post has been edited by ricktendo64: Aug 3 2006, 10:24 AM

this looks like a great tool i know that microsoft has a list of updates on their site somwhere for office 2000 still trying to find it again

There IS a problem, every time when i slipstream my office with the updates (using this method. When sp2 is slipstreamed, it is OK. However, when the updates are slipstreamed in the source Microsoft update asks to install them. I discovered that when we add the hotfix information in the registry there is no problem with WU too. For example, I use this registry file for two months (however it is not up-to date now). I'm not sure if this entry's are enough (or some of them are not needed) but it is working.

This post has been edited by colornokia: Aug 12 2006, 10:12 AM

well i found the otehr page its alot easyer to read and understand
http://www.microsoft.com/office/orkarchive/2kupdt.htm

Can't wait to test that.

Could this also be used to slipstream just an individual Office Component? Say, Outlook?

HI. Any news about the Office Patcher?

Grettings from ivans2605 / Copenhagen Denmark

@TAiN
Yes. You just include the hotfixes that you want to include.

@ivans2605
Lack of time, I'm afraid. I got my hands full with HFSLIP already.

It would make things easier for me if anyone can give me a full list of hotfixes for a particular Office distribution (the first Office CD is good enough) so I can put up an "alpha release". The difficulty lies in finding out which MSP files are to be ignored. The script in its current state is only useful if the Office source has already been patched recently.

@Tomcat76
I've just installed an unattended Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003
(Danish version) with slipstreamed SP2, it