Installing Office 2007 on Terminal Server and removing user information

For those Systems Administrator (like me) or Helpdesk who have experience in installing Microsoft Office 2007 on the Terminal Server, their first big disappointment/frustration is the fact that after installing Office 2007 on the Terminal Server, the user information of the account used to install Office is replicated to all users who then run an Office application. For example, if you install office 2007 on the Terminal server using “XYZ” account, this account (XYZ) will be the owner of all the office documents/files users (on the terminal server) will then create. This fact has been a big frustration for both users and the IT administrators.

In this post, I will be describing how to delete identifying information recorded to the Terminal Server shadow registry key by Setup during Office 2007 installation and to make sure that user information of the account used to install Office is not replicated to all users.

(Note: As you can see, this procedure involve modifying the registry of the server, please take extra caution by backing up your registry key before proceeding.)

1. After installing Office 2007, make sure you DO NOT open/run  any office applications.
2. Go to “Run” and type “Regedit” command and perss “Enter” (this will open the registry).
3. Go to:
   “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Microsoft\Office” and delete “Office” subkey.
4. Reboot the Server.

Hope this helps!