Managing Mac OS X system preferences

Office for Mac 2011 will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see these resources.

 

Applies to: Office for Mac 2011

Topic Last Modified: 2016-12-16

We recommend that you centrally manage the Mac OS X settings that affect the operation of Office for Mac 2011 or the security of users' computers. Some preferences are stored in the form of Mac OS X system preferences; other settings are in the form of mechanisms such as the Keychain Access application.

System Preference Settings in Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)

System preference setting Description

Search Domains on the TCP/IP tab

Domain information for completing user-entered URLs that are not fully qualified

DNS Servers on the TCP/IP tab

Preferred Domain Name System servers

The proxy settings on the Proxies tab

Proxy server port settings

To access these settings, on the Apple menu, click System Preferences, and then under Internet & Network, click Network. On the Show pop-up menu, click the interface that you are configuring.

System Preference Settings in Mac OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard)

System preference setting Description

Search Domains on the DNS tab

Domain information for completing user-entered URLs that are not fully qualified

DNS Servers on the DNS tab

Preferred Domain Name System servers

The proxy settings on the Proxies tab

Proxy server port settings

To access these settings, on the Apple menu, click System Preferences, and then under Internet & Wireless, click Network. In the Network dialog box, click Advanced. Click the tab for the interface that you are configuring.

Several tools are available that can be used to set system preferences on users' computers:

  • Apple Workgroup Manager

  • Apple Remote Desktop command-line interface

  • AppleScript written to control the Mac OS X Terminal utility and deployed by using Apple Remote Desktop. Terminal is located in /Applications/Utilities.

For information about Workgroup Manager, see Client Management in the Mac OS X Server area of the Apple Web site (www.apple.com/server). For detailed information about managing preferences with Workgroup Manager, see the Mac OS X Server User Management documentation available for download on the Apple Web site (www.apple.com/server/documentation).

For an introduction to Apple Remote Desktop, see Apple Remote Desktop 3 on the Apple Web site (www.apple.com/remotedesktop). For detailed information, see the Apple Remote Desktop Administrator's Guide documentation available for download from the Resources page in the same area of the Apple Web site.

For information about the Terminal utility, see Terminal Help.