How do I customize my WinZip MSI? - 17.5 and earlier

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The instructions in this article concern editing the Property table in the WinZip MSI file. To do this, any simple MSI editing application may be used, including Microsoft's Orca. Most of these customization options involve editing the values of properties that already exist in the Property table. However, some of them require that you create a new property and enter your desired value. An example of a property you would have to create is INSTALLDIR.

Note: Editing the properties described below may only affect installing WinZip with limited user involvement.

Contents:

Installation placement and registration

Installation folder property (INSTALLDIR)

The INSTALLDIR property allows you to set the installation folder for WinZip. To do this, insert INSTALLDIR into the Property table and then enter the destination path. For example, if you wish to install WinZip into the "WinZip" subfolder of the "Utility" folder on your D: drive, enter D:\Utility\WinZip as the value for the INSTALLDIR property that you create.

License File Property (USER_WZMUL_LOCATION)

The USER_WZMUL_LOCATION property (WinZip 14.0 build 8688 or later) allows you to specify a folder from which your license file (WinZip.wzmul) will be copied. As with the INSTALLDIR property described above, you would need to insert USER_WZMUL_LOCATION into the Property table. The value must be the path to a folder in which you have saved your WinZip.wzmul file. This path should be a shared location to which any installing users have access. Once this property has been entered and the WinZip.wzmul file has been saved in the designated folder, it will automatically be copied to the correct location to cause WinZip to run as registered. The value you enter may either be a drive letter and path (G:\Software\License File) or a network path (\\Server\Share\Folder Name).

Various Configuration Options

Installation Switches

The INSTALLCMD property allows or suppresses certain WinZip functionality. By default, the value of this property is /autoinstall. Switches can be added to this property, but /autoinstall must remain and must be the last switch. Each switch should be preceded by the forward slash (/) and should have a space after it. The available switches are in the table below.

Switch

Description
noqp Have no WinZip Quick Pick in the taskbar tray
noc4u Disable and remove the Check for Update feature
notip Prevent the Tip of the Day from displaying
nopredefinedjobs Prevent pre-configured WinZip jobs from being installed
nojobrunprompt Prevent the prompt dialog from appearing when running WinZip jobs (Caution: Be sure to consider the security implications of allowing your users to automatically run WinZip Job files before using this parameter.)
altext "XXX" The altext property will associate the file extension you specify with WinZip. In other words, if you double click a file with the extension specified, it will open in WinZip (Not available with WinZip 10.0)
noaod Prevent WinZip from automatically opening MS Office files when you double click a Zip file (requires WinZip 14.5 or later)
disableaod Prevent users from changing the auto-open for Office files feature* (Requires WinZip 14.5 or later)

*Note: Using the /disableaod switch by itself will not disable "auto-open". The /noaod switch would also need to be used to both disable this and to prevent configuration changes.

Example: To customize your installation to have no WinZip Quick Pick icon and no pre-configured WinZip Job files installed, the INSTALLCMD property should read:

/noqp /nopredefinedjobs /autoinstall

Properties Regarding Shortcut Placements

These custom properties control whether or not WinZip shortcuts will be created (there are 3 default locations):

Property

Description
ADDDESKTOPICON Add the WinZip Desktop icon to the user's desktop
ADDMENUGROUP Add a WinZip Menu Group item to Start -> All Programs for each user
ADDSTARTMENU Add WinZip to the top of each user's Start Menu

The MSI, as shipped, sets each of the above properties to a value of "1" (enable). Each property can be set to "0" (disable) to prevent the addition of the corresponding feature.

Default Compression Method Property (DEFCOMPICK)

The DEFCOMPICK property (WinZip 12 or later) allows you to set the default compression method for WinZip. The default compression method for WinZip is Legacy. You may want to change the default to Best method, which uses advanced compression to give you the smallest Zip file (.zipx) WinZip can create to date.

Value

Description
Best Sets the default compression method for WinZip to Best method. Highly compressed Zipx files will be created. WinZip 12.1 or later will be required to open them and extract their contents.
Legacy Sets the default compression method for WinZip to Legacy. Highly compatible (Zip 2.0) Zip files will be created (any Zip file utility should be able to open them and extract their contents). This file format typically does not provide good compression results.

WinZip User Feedback Properties

The USAGEPICK property (WinZip 14 or later) is set by default to provide WinZip Computing with information regarding the ways in which WinZip is used on your computer. This information will be used to improve WinZip. No personally identifiable information will be collected.

Value

Description
Usage_Yes Turns data collection on
Usage_No Turns data collection off

Individuals will continue to have the ability to turn data collection on or off by checking or unchecking Collect and report statistics in the Miscellaneous tab of the WinZip Options dialog. The WinZip Options dialog can be opened by clicking the WinZip Options button in the Settings tab or by clicking Configuration in the Options menu if WinZip is in the Legacy menus/toolbar interface.

Additionally, you can use the USAGECOLLECTLOCK property to prevent users from changing your data collection setting. The USAGECOLLECTLOCK property is set to "0" by default. If you edit the value and set it to "1" data collection will be removed as an option in the WinZip Options dialog. Please make sure to also set USAGEPICK to your desired value, otherwise you will be locking the default Usage_Yes value.

When the MSI file is saved with a value of "1" for USAGECOLLECTLOCK and WinZip is installed manually, the WinZip User Feedback setup panel will state that the option to change this setting has been disabled by the administrator.

Preventing Features

Upgrade tab

You must have WinZip 17.5 build 10562 or later for this property to be available. Starting with this build, WinZip now includes a DISABLEUPGRADE property with a default value of "0". If you are installing your multi-user copy of WinZip with a Standard license and you would prefer that your users do not see an Upgrade tab in WinZip, you should configure this property with a value of "1". When WinZip is installed with this setting, there will be no Upgrade tab.

Cloud Services and Conversions

Starting with WinZip 17.5, cloud service features and conversion features available to users when using WinZip can be limited or disabled.

Property

Description
DISABLECLOUDSERVICES Restricts cloud service options available to the user
DISABLECONVERSIONS Restricts conversion options available to the user (not including encryption)
DEFAULTCLOUDSERVICE Specifies a default cloud service
NOUSERCLOUDDEFAULT Prevents user from specifying a default cloud service

None of the cloud services or conversions are disabled by default and there is no default cloud service set by default. The values and descriptions for these properties follows:

ZipSend and ZipShare
The ZipSend feature is no longer supported.

By default, both the ZipSend feature and the ZipShare feature (WinZip 16 or later) are available for use (value=1). Setting either or both of the following properties to 0 will cause the corresponding feature(s) to be unavailable. In the case of ZipSend, the icon used will be the same, but descriptions will change to ones describing Zip and E-Mail.

Property

Description
INST_ZIPSEND Control whether or not ZipSend is available
INST_ZIPSHARE Control whether or not ZipShare is available

Performance Scanner

The INSTALLSCANNER property (WinZip 15.5 or later) is set by default to install files enabling a demo system scan. If you configure this property with a value of 0 this feature will not be installed and will not display.

The WinZip Gadget

Gadgets are not supported in Windows 8. The default for WinZip 17 and later is to not install the WinZip Gadget. WinZip 15 to 16.5 did install the gadget by default. Two properties are available for controlling the WinZip Gadget.

Property

Description
SHOWGADGET Control whether the gadget displays
INSTALLGADGET Control whether the gadget installs

For both of these properties, a value of 1 equals "on" while a value of 0 equals off. If SHOWGADGET is set to "1" but INSTALLGADGET is left set to "0", the gadget still will not be installed. If INSTALLGADGET is set to "1" the WinZip Gadget will be installed, but if SHOWGADGET is set to "0" it will not display unless the user later specifically adds the WinZip Gadget.

WinZip Themes

The INSTALLTHEMES property (WinZip 15.5 or later) is set by default to install more than the default WinZip Classic theme. If you configure this property with a value of 0 only the WinZip Classic theme will be installed.

Password Policy Properties

Note: These properties only affect WinZip Pro (12.0 and later, unless specified)

WinZip 12.0 (and later), when installed by the administrator with a Pro license, includes options to set policies that will force a password to meet strength requirements defined by the policy. Restricting users from making changes to these policies and/or disabling encryptions methods is also available. The properties for configuring password policies are in the table below.

Property

Description
PASSWORDLENGTH Specify the minimum length of a password
PASSWORDREQLOWER Require passwords to contain at least one lower case character; a through z
PASSWORDREQUPPER Require passwords to contain at least one upper case character; A through Z
PASSWORDREQNUMBER Require passwords to contain at least one numeric character
PASSWORDREQSYMBOL Require passwords to contain at least one symbol character
PASSWORDRESTRICT Prevent users from changing password policies
ENCRYPTDISABLEMETHODS Disable one of more encryption method
ALWAYSENCRYPT Force the use of encryption when creating Zip files (WinZip 17.0 and later)

The allowed values for PASSWORDREQLOWER, PASSWORDREQUPPER, PASSWORDREQNUMBER, PASSWORDREQSYMBOL, PASSWORDRESTRICT, and ALWAYSENCRYPT are: TRUE, FALSE, and DEFAULT. The WinZip DEFAULT is currently the same as FALSE for each of these. Setting the value to TRUE enables the requirement.

Any number from 1 to 99 can be used as the value for PASSWORDLENGTH. WinZip uses a default value of "8".

The allowed values for ENCRYPTDISABLEMETHODS are ZIP20, AES128, AES256, and DEFAULT. You can enter one, two, or all three encryption methods. The WinZip DEFAULT is for none of the methods to be disabled. DEFAULT cannot be used with any of the other values.

Disabling one or two methods will make the specified method(s) unavailable. If all three methods are disabled and a user attempts to encrypt, WinZip will display a caution message explaining that the encryption feature has been disabled by the administrator. For example, if you want your users to only use 256-bit AES encryption ENCRYPTDISABLEMETHODS should read ZIP20,AES128 (the values are delimited with a comma and no space).

The registry settings created by these properties are described in
Registry settings for WinZip; Policies and more.

WinZip Email feature

Note: These properties only affect WinZip Pro (WinZip 15.5 build 9510 or later)

The WinZip Email feature is available for use with Zip and E-Mail and/or with WinZip Job email notifications (WinZip Pro required). This built-in email support tool allows the use of 3 webmail services and allows the user to configure other email services as well as email accounts.

The 3 properties below can be used to limit these configuration options. The default value for each is "0". Entering a value of "1" will activate the limitation. For information regarding how to remove any or all of the default webmail services and/or how to setup a specific email service for users, please see WinZip configuration files (.wzconfig).

Property

Description
NOEDITMAILACCTS Prevent users from adding and/or editing email accounts; does not limit configuring email services
NOEDITMAILSVCS Prevent users from adding/or editing email services; does not limit configuring email accounts
NOINTERNALEMAILER Removes the E-mail tab from the WinZip Options dialog and totally disables WinZip's built-in email facility

Working with the Evaluation Version MSI

If you have downloaded the evaluation version MSI file (winzipxxx.msi) you should be aware of two other WinZip MSI properties listed below.

Property

Description
ADD_WZMUL Add the WinZip license file (WinZip.wzmul) contained in the MSI file to the Common AppData folder
SHOW_WEBPAGE After uninstalling WinZip, open the internet browser to a
Why Did you Uninstall web page

For each of these properties a value of "1" equals enable and a value of "0" equals disable.

Custom MSI files, available on request, will contain the customer's license file (WinZip.wzmul) and the ADD_WZMUL property will be set to "1" to cause this license to be installed at the same time that WinZip installs. The default value in the evaluation version MSI file for this property is "0" insuring that the "dummy" license file it contains as a placeholder will not be installed. If you have a good application for creating and editing MSI files you may be able to remove this bogus file and replace it with your actual license file. If you do, you should also set ADD_WZMUL to "1" or your license file will not be installed with WinZip.

Note: With WinZip 14.0 build 8688 or later you do not need to change the ADD_WZMUL value if you have inserted a USER_WZMUL_LOCATION property and value.

The default setting for SHOW_WEBPAGE in the WinZip evaluation version MSI is "1". In order to prevent each user's internet browser from displaying the Why Did you Uninstall web page after WinZip is uninstalled, you will want to change this to "0" (this is the default setting for a custom MSI file).

Installing WinZip with limited user involvement

If WinZip is installed manually (full user involvement) any editing you have done to the INSTALLCMD property will be ignored. The user will be offered default options which can be configured in the Installation Wizard. Any custom changes you have made to other properties, such as ADDDESKTOPICON will not be ignored when you manually install.

To insure that all of your custom settings are used, you should install with limited user involvement. Installing WinZip by Group Policy is silent and will use all of your custom settings. Windows Installer switches executed from a command line or script can also limit user involvement. Typically, these switches would be used with msiexec.exe. Three common switches are /qr (reduced), /qb (basic), and /qn (none or silent). For example, if you would like WinZip to install silently your command line could be:

msiexec /i \\server\share\winzipxxx.msi /qn

For more information regarding installing from a command line see
Command line installing with the WinZip MSI file.

Important Additional Considerations

WinZip installs as a machine level application rather than a user level application. As a result, once WinZip is installed and registered for one user of a computer, WinZip is available and registered for all users of that computer (please keep this in mind when purchasing licenses). Since WinZip is a machine level application, performing a "user configuration" installation by Group Policy (GPO) is not supported.

Therefore, if you will be installing by Group Policy:

You may also want to avoid using the administrative install option (MSIEXEC /a) with this MSI file. Although WinZip will install from the resulting program files and MSI file generated from an administrative install, the path to WinZip will be determined by the target folder specified at the time of the administrative install. In other words, if you specify that this administrative install should place the WinZip files in a shared network folder named "Software", the resulting group policy installation of WinZip will be placed on the users' computers with a path of "C:\Software\Program Files\WinZip".

If you have any questions about this information please email Technical Support.

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