If you have an administrative password for your system, please IGNORE this tutorial. You don’t need it. Just use the installer for openoffice as normal. If you have a windows XP or windows vista machine, and you want to install openoffice but don’t have the administrative password or access to an account with administrative privileges, read on. If you get a dialog box “ The installation wizard cannot be run properly because you are logged in as a user without sufficient administrator rights for this system. ” then this tutorial will probably help you.

Normally, when installing a program on a widows PC, you will need an account with administrative privileges to perform the install. Under normal circumstances, the installer for OpenOffice on windows needs administrative access to system files to install effectively. There is a method, however, to make OpenOffice run smoothly on a windows system, even if you don’t have access to an administrative account or administrative password.

Installing using the full features of the installer will ultimately give the best user experience as file types are automatically associated, so when you click on a document with a given extension (eg .ods, .odg) it will automatically open with the right program. I will show you towards the end of the install tutorial how to associate fie types manually.

If you are a computer whiz, then you could just follow the outline instructions as follows. If you are not so familiar with computers and computer software, you may need the fully detailed instructions further down. So, for the whizzes;

Summary of steps

• Download OpenOffice 2.3.0 (2.3.1+ will not install with these instructions) from your favourite mirror

• Double click on installer. Let it unpack OpenOffice into a folder on your desktop

• Once the OpenOffice installer is unpacked in a folder on the desktop, run setup.exe from that folder with the /a switch to unpack OO for network install

• Create necessary links in the menus or desktop for the user to run the OpenOffice applications in the network install OpenOffice folder (in the programs sub folder).

If you have been digging around with computer software for years, that probably seems easy. So go ahead and do it. If you feel a little uncomfortable with computers, I will go through the process step by step with screen shots. Beware that the process was done using windows XP. Windows Vista should work similarly, but (fortunately) I am not subject to a copy of Vista.

1) Download a copy of openoffice 2.3.0 installer program file to your desktop. The latest version might not work, so stick to 2.3.0. If you find a later version does work with these instructions, please mail me.

2) Double click on the file you downloaded to start the installer (the installer won’t be able to complete the installation, but it will give us the files we need). Click Next.

3) Normally, the installer will unpack the files to a folder on your desktop. It gives you the option, but don’t change the option. To the desktop is fine.

4) The installation wizard will quit with a message “ The installation wizard cannot be run properly because you are logged in as a user without sufficient administrator rights for this system. ” . That is to be expected, and is part of this procedure. Click OK and continue to the next step.

5) The installation wizard gives a further confirmation and summary of what has happened. Click Finish.

6) Double click on the folder the installer has created on your desktop. It should look something like this:

7) Go to the start menu->“My Computer” This will open a window looking like the following. Double click on the first hard disk drive. This will be labelled something like “Local Disk (c:)”

8) In disk c:, open the “Documents and Settings” folder by double clicking on it.

9) Open your home folder. This will have the same name as your user account, the name of the account when you log in. Mine is called nick-user. Yours will be different.

10) When you open your home folder, it will look something like the following. Right click in there, and create a new folder as shown

11) We’ll call this new folder ooinst. Give it a name as shown. (We are creating a folder and giving it a name like this to make it easier when using a command line later)

12) Open the folder you created and named in step 11. Align the folder you opened in step 6 as shown, so the contents of both can be seen at the same time. With the window from step 6 highlighted (as shown), hold the ctrl button on your keyboard then press “a” momentarily (this is known as ctrl+a). This will highlight all items in the folder in blue. This means they are selected. (ctrl+a means “Select all” in most programs on Linux or Windows). With all items highlighted in blue, hold ctrl then press “x” momentarily. This means cut. Think of x like a pair of scissors. When we paste, items are removed from where we cut them from.

13) Highlight the window for the folder we created earlier (called ooinst). Then hold ctrl and press “v” momentarily. This means paste. The files should disappear from one folder and re-appear in the other. (see picture).

14) Go to the start menu (normally green in bottom left hand corner). Click on start, then click on run as shown

15) In the run dialog box, type command, as shown. Then click OK.

16) The XP command dialog appears as shown. This is called a DOS command line.

17) type into the command box the following (without quotation marks)“cd ooinst” then press the return (or enter) key on your keyboard.

18) Next type “setup.exe /a” again, without quotes. Again, press enter or return. This will launch the setup program in a special mode. A mode which creates what openoffice developers call “Network Install”. However, we will not be using OpenOffice over a network. We’ll be using it on the local computer. It just so happens the network install allows us to install OpenOffice without needing an administrative account.

19) The installation wizard for server image looks like the following. Slightly different from the normal installation wizard for OpenOffice.

20) The installation wizard wants to know where we want the network install folder. We will be putting it next to ooinst in your home folder we mentioned in step 10.

21) Click the “Change...” button in the installation wizard. This’ll give a dialogue box similar to this:

22) After double clicking on “Documents and Settings”, should look like:

23) After doble clicking on your home folder (as mentioned in step 9) should look something a little like the following (depending on what applications you have installed, and where your data is stored)

24) When your home directory is selected, click on the “New Folder” button as arrowed in the picture.

25) Name the new folder “ooinstalled” as shown, then click OK.

26) Your installation wizard should now look like the following picture, but with your own home directory instead of mine (nick-user). Click Install.

27) Whilst installing, should look like:

28) Click Finish

29) From the start menu (bottom left), open “My Computer”, then your hard drive (probably drive C:), “Documents and Settings” Your home folder, then “ooinstalled”

30) Within the ooinstalled folder, open the “program” folder.

31) I have circled the programs you are interested in in the program folder as shown. If you double click on these programs, OpenOffice will launch. It is inconvenient to navigate to the program folder every time you need to use OpenOffice. So we will create short cuts on the desktop for the most used OpenOffice programs. To create a desktop shortcut to the program, press and hold the Right mouse button on the program. Move the mouse to your desktop, then let go of the right mouse button. Move the mouse over “Create shortcuts here” then left click. This should make a shortcut on the desktop.

32) Repeat the process of right clicking and dragging to the desktop for the other programs I have circled. You should now have something like:

33) We no longer need the original downloaded OpenOffice file, nor do we need the install folder OpenOffice created on the desktop. These may be removed. You may also want to give the desktop icons more friendly names. You can do this by highlighting the icon (by clicking on it) then pressing F2 on your keyboard. The name for the icon should turn blue, ready for you to type a new name.

34) If you had the administrator password, and had used the installer, the file extensions for OpenOffice documents would already be associated with OpenOffice. Because we have not used the full installer, if you double click on an OpenOffice document, you will get a dialogue box similar to the following. Select "Select the program from a list" then click OK

35) As you can see, OpenOffice doesn’t yet appear in the list. You will ave to add it manually before you can associate OpenOffice files with OpenOffice. Click “Browse...”

36) Navigate to the “Program” folder - the same folder we used in step 31. You should see soffice in there. (Most other entries should be hidden, it’ll be much less cluttered). Select soffice then click “Open”.

37) As you can see, OpenOffice is now listed amongst the programs you can associate files with. Make sure OpenOffice is highlighted as shown, and “Always use the selected program to open this type of file” is ticked. Click OK.

You should now have icons on our desktop which can launch OpenOffice. You should also be able to associate any OpenOffice documents, drawings and databases with OpenOffice, so that when you double click on a document, it starts OpenOffice automatically.

Because OpenOffice hasn’t really installed in the traditional sense of the word (you just have a folder containing the complete program), it will not appear in you control panel or be shown in the un-install section of the windows control panel. You can un-install by simply removing the folder containing OpenOffice. To upgrade, rename the existing OpenOffice installed folder, then repeat steps 1-27.

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