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August 24, 2008
Enabling MathType macros by default in Office 2007
One of the biggest complaints in the lab is that when a user starts Office for the first time, they are greeted with a security warning asking them to enable/disable the macros for MathType. People always click disable macros because it is the default option, or don't know/care what MathType is, but selecting Disable Macros has other effects on Office, such as disabling printing.
I set out to find a way of trusting this publisher by default, so the MathType macros work by default, and people aren't prompted to enable them. The process involves extracting the Office 2007 install media from the Software Center package, running the Office 2007 Customization Tool, and adding the certificate of the publisher (Digital Science Inc.) to the list of trusted publishers.
First we extract the digital certificate used to sign MathType:
- Go to C:\Program Files\MathType, right click on MathType.exe , select 'Properties' and click on Digital Signatures Tab
- Select 'Digital Science Inc.' from the Signature List and click Details
- Click View Certificate
- Click Details tab
- Click "Copy to file..."
- Save the certificate to a file as a DER encoded binary (I called mine mathtype.cer)
Next, we extract the Office 2007 media from the Software Center package and run the Office 2007 Customization Tool:
- Run the Office 2007 package from the Software Ceneter
- Copy the folder C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temp\~vis0000\CD to another location C:\stuff\office2007
- Exit out of the Software Center office installation.
- Start the Office 2007 Customization Tool by running C:\stuff\office2007\setup.exe /admin
- Select Open an existing setup customization file and open the file C:\stuff\office 2007\Updates\case_full.MSP - you MUST do this since product key is saved in there!
- Click 'Office Security Settings'
- Click the 'Add' button next to 'Add the following digital certificates to the Trusted Publishers list:" and add the digital certificate (mathtype.cer) made earlier.
- Now go File -> Save As in the Office Customization Tool and save the new MSP file.
You can also replace the case_full.MSP file in the Updates folder so these configuration changes affect future installs of Office 2007.
You can use this method to make other changes to the Office 2007 configuration that you can't do via the Office 2007 Administrative Template files. For more information on deployment visit Change users' configurations after installing the 2007 Office system
Posted by djc6 at August 24, 2008 07:19 PM
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