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Adobe’s Customization Wizard for creating transforms

If you’re deploying Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader through Group Policy, there is one tool you need to know about. Adobe’s Customization Wizard allows you to create a transform (modifies the installation of software when it is deployed) that will configure many elements of the Acrobat and Reader products.

This 4.5 MB download allows you to enter the serial number, accept/suppress the EULA, and many other options that seem to be most easily accessible through this wizard.

You can access a manual (in pdf format, of course) for details on deploying Adobe Reader 9.

Adobe Reader comes as a setup.exe, so you’ll need to extract the .msi file in order to be able to use the customization wizard.

You can run this code on the setup.exe to get the .msi file:

<path to>AdbeRdr90_en_US.exe -nos_o”Reader9Install” -nos_ne

This will make it extract the .msi to the folder you specify as “Reader9Install” and not execute anything beyond that point. Alternatively, you can just run the installation and before the part where it starts copying files you can find the .msi located in the temporary folder.

The .msi for Adobe Acrobat 9 is located in a sub-folder on the installation media:

[CD Drive letter]:Adobe Acrobat 9 ProAdobe Acrobat 9 ProAcroPro.msi


Screenshot of Adobe Customization Wizard interface

When you have chosen all of the options you wanted, just click the standard disk icon to save the package. This will generate a .mst (transform) file to the same directory as your .msi by default. You can then specify this .mst in the group policy in the same wizard where you select the .msi for a new installation package and all of your customizations will be sent out along with the installation.

You can download the Customization Wizard 9 from Adobe here.