MOD2000: Package and Deployment Wizard Now Used to Create a Distributable Application

When you want to create a distributable application using Microsoft Office 2000 components and the Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition, you must now use the "Package and Deployment" Wizard instead of the Access Setup Wizard.

When you used the Microsoft Office 97 Developer Edition or earlier versions of the Microsoft Access Developer Tools, you could use the Access Setup Wizard to create custom run-time applications based on Microsoft Access. Because the earlier developer tools were primarily created to help you distribute Access run-time applications, the Setup Wizard was highly specific to building Access run-time setups.

The release of the Microsoft Office 2000 Developer (MOD) is a departure from the Access-centered model of earlier releases. The MOD is meant to be a developer tool for use with all the Office 2000 applications and requires tools that do not depend on an individual Office application. A version of the "Package and Deployment" Wizard has been used to package solutions in Microsoft Visual Basic since version 4.0. Therefore, it was a natural choice to create a version of this wizard for use in packaging Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) solutions. The VBA "Package and Deployment" Wizard Add-in can be run from within the Visual Basic Editor of any Office 2000 application. The "Package and Deployment" Wizard is not dependent upon Access as earlier versions of the Setup Wizard have been.

Using the "Package and Deployment" Wizard offers several advantages to Office 2000 users:

• Common user interface for all Office 2000 applications and Visual Basic.
• Automatic inclusion of all referenced type libraries and custom controls in the setup package.
• Ability to use the wizard to Deploy packaged solutions to both Network shares and web locations.
• The "Package and Deployment" Wizard is not dependent on any single Office application to run.

With the implementation of the "Package and Deployment" Wizard as the tool to create packages, there are some new limitations:

• Solutions including the Access Run-Time cannot be distributed by using multiple floppy disks.
• The "Package and Deployment" Wizard in the MOD does not provide a way to distribute icons for your applications
• The "Package and Deployment" Wizard does not provide a way to create registry settings based on user-defined folders.

For additional information about loading the "Package and Deployment" Wizard, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: