[panopticon]

I'm trying increase the speed at which Word 2007 (and PowerPoint) open for
users in our computer labs. Here is the problem: When Word (and PP) 2007
startup for the first time FOR EACH NEW USER, you get a message "configuring
Microsoft office 2007..." and a progress bar that takes like 40-50 seconds to
complete. This makes startup of Word very slow. In the past, we got around
these issues on Office 2003 (and other programs like web browsers) by logging
in as a €�generic user€�, opening all these applications and choosing our
preferred settings (which involved checking boxes for those "do not show this
again" type of messages), and then copying this €œgeneric€� profile into the
Default User profile, thus giving all new users the same pre-configured
settings and getting around these startup message slow-downs. BUT, as weve
found, this trick doesnt work for Word and PP 2007.

Maybe the user settings for the new Word and PowerPoint dont live in each
users profile, Im not sure. Regardless, it is annoying to have the
most-used application take so long to start for each user.

In our environment, we have hundreds of students logging into these machines
every day. This means a new profile is created for each user at each login
since we run delprof to keep the machines clean. So, even if a user sits
through the "configuring Microsoft office 2007..." message once and happens
to return to the same machine, it is likely that their profile will be
deleted by the time they return again.