Deploying your SoftMaker Office 2021 installation

You can install SoftMaker Office 2021 for Windows across your network using your favorite software-deployment tool.

Deployment instructions

Configuring SoftMaker Office Professional 2021 and SoftMaker Office NX Universal with administrative templates

Administrators can use administrative templates to distribute application settings for SoftMaker Office via group policies to computers in a network. When such a setting is made centrally, users can no longer change it on their own.

You can also use administrative templates to distribute a product key for SoftMaker Office, relieving you from having to manually enter it on individual computers.

The following describes using administrative templates on a local PC. The templates are also compatible with system-management software such as SCCM and SMS.

1. Download the Administrative Templates for SoftMaker Office 2021 and unpack them.
2. Place the file softmaker.admx in %windir%\PolicyDefinitions.
3. Place the file softmaker.adml in %windir%\PolicyDefinitions\en-US (replace en-US with the language code of your system).
4. Run gpedit.msc.
5. You can now find the SoftMaker Office Professional settings in Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > SoftMaker and in Local Computer Policy > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > SoftMaker:
   • Settings made in Computer Configuration are for all users of the computer.
   • Settings made in User Configuration are for the logged-in user.
6. Click to open one of the SoftMaker branches.
7. Next, click on the application whose settings you want to change.
8. You will now see the application settings that are available for configuration. Double-click on a setting to edit it. There are three choices:
   • Not configured: The setting is not made. Users can configure it inside SoftMaker Office Professional.
   • Enabled: The setting is set to "On", and users can no longer change it in SoftMaker Office Professional.
   • Disabled: The setting is set to "Off", and users can no longer change it in SoftMaker Office Professional.
   For some settings, additional choices are displayed in the dialog box. Set them as needed.

Installing SoftMaker Office for Windows on a USB flash drive

If you want to carry SoftMaker Office for Windows and important documents with you, you can copy SoftMaker Office to a USB flash drive. You can then insert this USB flash drive in any Windows-based computer (for example, those of friends or in Internet cafes) and run SoftMaker Office. When you unplug the USB flash drives, no traces of SoftMaker Office are left behind on the PC.

Proceed as follows:

1. Install SoftMaker Office on your regular PC's built-in hard drive. This lets you work with the applications as usual on your PC, even without a USB flash drive.
2. Click on the Windows Start button, then select Programs > SoftMaker Office > Utilities > Install SoftMaker Office on a USB stick.
3. Follow the instructions in this program. The program now copies the complete SoftMaker Office folder and the complete folder My Documents\SoftMaker to your USB flash drive. This makes all SoftMaker Office program files, all documents and all settings from My Documents\SoftMaker available on the USB flash drive.

When the program is done, your USB flash drive contains a fully functional copy of SoftMaker Office which does not register itself in Windows, as well as all your documents and configuration files.

To launch one of the programs, open the SoftMaker Office folder on the USB flash drive and click on the program you wish to run (for example, TextMaker.exe or PlanMaker.exe).

Installing SoftMaker Office for Linux on a USB flash drive

You can run SoftMaker Office for Linux from a USB flash drive, too. Proceed as follows:

1. Install SoftMaker Office on the built-in hard drive of your Linux PC. This lets you work with SoftMaker Office in the regular way, even without a USB flash drive.
2. Create a folder on the USB flash drive and copy the contents of the SoftMaker Office application folder (for example, /usr/share/office2021) to this folder:

mkdir /media/disk/office2021 (replace /media/disk with your USB flash drive's path)
cd /usr/share/office2021
cp -Rv * /media/disk/office2021 (replace /media/disk with your USB flash drive's path)

3. In this new folder on the USB flash drive, create a file with the name portable.txt. Its content is irrelevant:

cd /media/disk/office2021 (replace /media/disk with your USB flash drive's path) 
touch portable.txt

The portable.txt file is just a "marker file" that informs SoftMaker Office that it should run in portable mode and not leave any configuration files on the host operating system.

4. Then, launch TextMaker:

./textmaker

TextMaker will create the folder /media/disk/office2021/SoftMaker and copy its default document templates and configuration files into it. This can take up to half a minute. After that, TextMaker starts.

The installation is complete now.

If you like, you can now also copy additional documents and templates to the flash drive. Place documents in /media/disk/office2021/SoftMaker. Copy templates to /media/disk/office2021/SoftMaker/TextMaker 2021 templates and /media/disk/office2021/SoftMaker/PlanMaker 2021 templates.

To launch one of the programs, open the SoftMaker Office folder on the USB flash drive and double-click on the program you wish to launch (textmaker, planmaker or presentations).