Nov 14 2011
Microsoft Office Environmental Assessment Tool
If you are considering migrating to Microsoft 0ffice 2010, you need to learn more about this month’s free utility – Microsoft Office Environmental Assessment Tool (OEAT). This tool checks the PC’s overall configuration, in order to understand it when you upgrade to Office 2010′s performance. In addition to reporting on memory, disk space, and similar factors, this tool also scans the current version of Office installed all add-ons.
Start OEAT.exe, you will see the utility’s main screen, shown in Figure 1. To test the tool on a current PC, select the first option to scan your system. OEAT provides two different scanning options – fast scanning and passive scanning.
What’s the difference between the two? Quick scan in the default list of folders and registry keys to check the add-ins, just a few seconds of running time. Passive scanning monitor Office API calls in your application when you create or modify specific registry entries. This scan in memory to run silently, when needed at least one hour.
To be truly effective a passive scan, you may want to run this scan using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and various third-party applications to monitor what applications OEAT call Office API. Sensible approach is to first run a quick scan. Later, you can always run a passive scan to see if for more information.
Scanning will get the associated data, and stored in two XML files, using a stored scan settings and one for actual results. After the scan is complete, from the main screen, select “Compile the results”, OEAT will collate the data to an Excel workbook in a single worksheet, and will automatically open in Excel.
The first worksheet SummaryReport provide information about your PC, including hard disk space, memory and processor type. In addition, also displays the version of Windows and Office, as well as anti-virus software for more information.
The second worksheet AllInstalledAddins show any interaction with the office 2011 add-ins registry key. For example, in my first scan, OEAT displayed for Adobe PDF Maker, Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the Nuance PaperPort scanning software Office add-ins registry key. The list also covers Microsoft’s own Office add-ins.
The third worksheet AddinsNotShippedWithOffice Show Office does not include add-ons.The next several worksheets (Average Disk Space, 32bit vs. 64bit, Antivirus Status and others) shows the pie chart, intuitive description of other work, including some of the data table. Finally, a summary worksheet RawData other information in the table, add more detailed information, including computer name, IP address, user accounts, domain names and other information.
This utility automatically to the file name OEAT Report.xlsx to save the Excel workbook.The files and XML files are stored in files and READ_ME you OEAT.exe extract the files to the same folder. If the scan does not run properly, will generate an error log (errors.log).
