How to view output from the Office Customization Tool

  • Article

The Office Resource Kit includes a sample Microsoft Visual Basic script that administrators can use to view the settings stored in Office Customization Tool (OCT) MSP files. The OCT is the primary tool that administrators use to customize an installation of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. The customizations are saved in a Setup customization MSP file that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) format. You have to have the volume license version of Office 2007 in order to access the OCT.

To run the sample script, use Microsoft Windows Script Host (WSH), a language-independent scripting host for Windows Script-compatible scripting engines. WSH allows you to run scripts from both the Windows desktop and the command prompt. It also provides drag-and-drop support for scripts which means that you can drag files onto a WSH script. The file names are translated into arguments on the command line. The "View XML content from Office Customization Tool customization files" article (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179027.aspx) includes:

  • The sample VB script, ExtractOctXml.vbs
  • Instructions for running the script with an OCT MSP file

The article also shows how to locate settings in the resulting XML file that opens in Internet Explorer when you run the ExtractOctXml.vbs script with an OCT MSP customization file.