buckeyeXP's Office Shrink Techniques?

[<SparTacuS>]

I have used Office shrink since its first version and think it is great. So great in fact that I would love to be able to do the same with many other MSI/MST based installations.

I gather from other posts that buckeyeXP is no-longer around so - is anybody else "in the know" about the way that his office shrinker works. Especially, would it be possible to build a generic AnyMSI.Shrinker?

[prathapml]

Try reading all his old posts, and you might get a full view of how it works (you can see all his posts from a link in his profile).

Anyways, let me tell what I can:

Basically the tool is an AutoIT script. Which is able to do file-moving/copying operations, and auto-click dialog boxes.

Now when you select the main setup MSI and MST, this tool copies both those files to a different folder, along with whatever files are known to to be essential to setup Office. And then it starts the setup with a switch to use that MST. Now as the setup runs, it complains that file1 is missing, file2 is missing, etc. buckeye's script captures the text in the dialog, and copies over the required file from the source folder to the new slimmed location (where it originally copied your setup.exe and MST). Once that file is copied over, it is no longer missing, so the script clicks the retry button (so now the file is found, and setup continues). After this, the next file missing prompt that comes up, is also dealt with in the same way. This carries on till the end.

This way, the MST dictates what files are needed and only those files are selected from the install source, and these are recorded by the OfficeShrink tool.

Some files already exist, so obviously setup does not throw up the file missing dialog and so the script is unable to capture all the files necessary. This is why people end up still having some files missing when they do a clean unattended install with the incomplete set of files. Its because of this, that buckeyeXP recommends you run the shrinker on a clean windows installation.

One more thing you might know, is that lot of people in that thread are complaining about a 7 MB install folder. That's happening because the base setup.exe and MST got copied, but some unexpected situation prevented the script from handling it properly, so it just exits after just those files alone.

I'm relating the above two to explain how it all works, so that whoever makes a similar tool will know it and prevent errors in handling unexpected situations.

Hoping this helps....

[<SparTacuS>]

Thanks for the info prathapml.

I'm only just learning AutoIT so don't expect much for a long time, but I did follow your explanation and I believe that I may be able to make a start.

Will also follow your advice re buckeyeXP's posts - I will go through them again - more carefully this time.

[buletov]

Anyways, let me tell what I can:

Basically the tool is an AutoIT script.  Which is able to do file-moving/copying operations, and auto-click dialog boxes.

Now when you select the main setup MSI and MST, this tool copies both those files to a different folder, along with whatever files are known to to be essential to setup Office. And then it starts the setup with a switch to use that MST.  Now as the setup runs, it complains that file1 is missing, file2 is missing, etc.  buckeye's script captures the text in the dialog, and copies over the required file from the source folder to the new slimmed location (where it originally copied your setup.exe and MST). Once that file is copied over, it is no longer missing, so the script clicks the retry button (so now the file is found, and setup continues). After this, the next file missing prompt that comes up, is also dealt with in the same way. This carries on till the end.

This way, the MST dictates what files are needed and only those files are selected from the install source, and these are recorded by the OfficeShrink tool.

THIS IS BRILIANT!

What a great idea...

[prathapml]

indeed, buckeyeXP made a brilliant tool.

[j_stam_84]

I believe this to be possible for sure!

Actually, I'm working on it right now.

The problem with ShrinkOffice is that it retrieves the handle for the window(s) based on the title and a piece of the text in the window ('cause the window titles are the same.. ). This approach has a couple of disadvantages :

- You need to define the window titles which differs per Office version

so when you want to support every setup, you'll need to manually add support

for it

- It's bound to Office and Office alone

This is actually but a guess... Since the sourcecode isn't available (well... I couldn't find it anyway), there's no way to tell for sure... But if you're familiar with AutoIT

you'll agree with me.

The version I'm working on, written from scratch ofcourse, takes different approach to retrieve those handles and thus avoiding the problem with

the difference in Office versions and languages...

It already works for Office XP Professional (Dutch) and it'll soon be tested on Office 2K3 Professional (Dutch aswell)... But since I don't have more Office versions I'll add a binary (see this topic)which generates a log when running ShrinkOffice.

(You have to run it simultaneously with "setup TRANSFORMS=yourmst.mst /qb" <-- no "-" at the end!).If anybody is interested, download it and post the results (or problems ) here.

That way I can check if I'm right and if it'll work on every setup. I *think*

that it won't work for Pre-2K versions (if they can be installed in the same way first of all) but you're welcome to try .

If that's the case, I'll finish the script and try to add support for a Universal Shrinkage Tool.

Heck, if anybody is interested in helping out, I'll even post the sourcecode in a couple of days/weeks so anybody can contribute !