Changing licensed user info

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Is there an easier way to change the licensed user information for Office products (MSO 97 and Outlook 2000) rather than uninstalling and reinstalling the products? I support a volatile 300+ user environment and they like to share documents a lot. It ticks me off to have to uninstall and reinstall products when all that needs to be changed is the licensed user name.

We are a mixed Windows ’95 & ’98 shop. MSO 97 and Outlook 2000 are locally installed.

Thank you. Tamara

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if you are a corporate entity, why not use the corporate name in both identifiers rather than individual users? (“This product is licenced to “Our Company Name” in company “Our Company Name”)

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When a lot of people share documents and someone has it locked it it helps to know who it is.

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Sorry – we must have replied at the same time. My response is not very practical

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Actually your idea is very pratical because it does solve the sharing issue. I just confirmed it. But users see the Spash screen and the Help About box and want that changed too. It would be nice to quickly change the displayed user info but maybe using Organization Name twice will have to do.

Thanks.

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The user info might[/i] be held in the registry somewhere.
If you have loads to do, and you are happy editing the registry, try and install with a user name so obscure it won’t already be in it.
Think of something and do a search – if it doesn’t appear in the registry, try an install with that user name then re-search and see if it appears in the registry. If it does and you can change all instances successfully, it may beat a complete re-install. Bear in mind you may have to edit the user name anyway as well this way.

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I’ve been working mostly with W2K/O2K lately, but I can give some hints for W9x/O97.

The user information that appears in Tools|Options is stored in the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice8.0UserInfo, in two values: UserName and UserInitials. Unfortunately, both are of type REG_BINARY, as they are storing Unicode strings rather than ASCII text. To come up with your own Unicode string to populate this field, you will need a hex code chart for the ASCII character set, such as can be found at http://www.asciitable.com[/url%5D. Translate the name you wish to populate into hex – for example, Bob Jones would be 42 6F 98 20 4A 6F 6E 65 73. Note the ’20’, which is the code for a space. This is the ASCII hex string. To change this to Unicode, insert a pair of zeroes after each hex pair, and add four zeroes to the end. Thus:
42006F00980020004A006F006E00650073000000. If you are going to do this for any appreciable number of users, you will clearly need an automation script of some sort. Bob’s initials will be 42 4A, so the unicode string will be 42004A000000. You could write a .reg file that can be merged into the registry using regedit.exe, which would look something like

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice8.0CommonUserInfo]
"UserName"=hex:42,00,6F,00,98,00,20,00,4A,00,6F,00,6E,00,65,00,73,00,00,00
"UserInitials"=hex:42,00,4A,00,00,00

For this to be practical, you want an automated way of generating these .reg files using a script. (Of course, you can just change the info in the User Information tab, or give the user instructions on how to do so.)Changing this user information will also affect Excel and PowerPoint.

If you are using Office 2000, you need to change the user name that is stored in a user’s normal.dot template, and save it back out over their old one. (Registry locations are also slightly different.) You can do this by opening the user’s normal.dot in Word, selecting File|Properties, Summary tab, and entering the correct user name into the Author field (or writing a script to do so). A quick test on my WNT/O97 machine suggested that that change is unnecessary under O97, but don’t hold me to that.

I’m not overly familiar with the way 9x deals with multiple users and the registry – under WNT/W2K you have to load in the NTUSER.DAT hive for a user who is not logged on if you wish to modify it. Resource kit utilities such as regini.exe and reg.exe are useful in those cases.

I don’t think it will be easy to change the registration info that appears on the splash screen. This gets stuck several places in the registry, but I am suspecting that it also modifies WINWORD.EXE and the other executables. I actually just posted on this subject in the Word area, as I’m trying to change the company name. (My company has just completed its merger.) We used Business Unit/Company Name for User/Company registration info – it protected us from changes in staffing, but a company name change is clearly a different ball of wax.

Good luck,
Paul

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Wow, thanks for the info. I found I don’t have to figure out the hex values because I can just type over the text on the right hand side of the screen leaving and it “converts” for me.

Fortunately I don’t have multiple user PCs so I don’t have to figure out the registry in that case.

In a quick survey users in my office realize that changing the Help About info and Splash screen info is a pointless task – they are happy that the “locked by user” information is correct for shared documents.

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Currently I search the registry for the key UserInfo and edit the values for UserInitials and UserName. There are 4 instances in my case. After a reboot the “locked by user” information is correct for shared documents and I don’t have to edit the user information in individual applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). However the information on the Splash screen and the Help About box still contains the old information.

Thanks anyway. Tamara

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Where are those four instances? Is that four instances of _each_ or two of each totalling four? I don’t have a Windows 9x machine in front of me, but under Windows NT/2K the registry location HKEY_CURRENT_USER is aliased to the same location as HKEY_USERS{big-long-hex-number-that-is-the-current-user’s-SID}. I don’t know offhand if W9x even _has_ a HKEY_USERS key, but if that is the case you only need to change them in one of the locations. (Though you would probably notice that both locations change at the same time when you edit either one.)

You can also use RegEdit.exe to make this change remotely, if you are so inclined and have sufficient network privileges. (Depending on how your environment is set up, of course.) Run RegEdit from the comfort of your office/cubicle/closet and select the menu option Registry|Connect Network Registry…. Enter the name of the computer you wish to update in the dialog box that comes up, with or without the leading . Any changes you make are enacted immediately on the target machine. Right-click on the machine’s name in the left pane of RegEdit and click Disconnect, or select Registry|Disconnect Network Registry… when you are done.

Good luck,
Paul

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I’m out of my depth as a mere user, not a net tech. However, our shop runs NT servers and seems to be able to tell who is using what at any time through other means. Also, from a user perspective, O97 tells you who has a file locked when you try to access it.

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I agree with John’s answer as being the best long term solution.
But – you are just referring to the splash start-up screen name? The user name can be set in Tools/User Information.

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