Installing Publish by Zaweba without admin rights

Getting a program onto the Start menu usually means an administrator password, which is awkward on a school laptop, a work PC or a computer a family member looks after. Publish by Zaweba avoids that with Tools > Install for this user, a one-step install that needs no admin rights at all.

It does three things. It copies the app's folder to your own programs area, at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Zaweba\Publish. It adds a Start menu shortcut so you can find Publish like any other program. And it sets Publish to open .ozp files, so double-clicking a publication opens it straight away.

Why install for one user

Windows keeps two kinds of place for programs. One is shared by everyone on the computer and needs an administrator to change. The other belongs to you alone and doesn't. Installing for this user puts Publish in the second kind, which is why no password prompt appears and why it works on computers where you can't install things the usual way.

The trade-off is that it's your install. Another person who signs in to the same PC with their own Windows account won't see Publish in their Start menu unless they run Install for this user from their own account too. On a shared family computer, that's often exactly right, because each person gets their own setup.

Doing it

Start Publish from wherever you first put it, then choose Tools > Install for this user. Once it finishes, look in the Start menu for Publish by Zaweba. You can pin it to Start or to the taskbar from there in the usual Windows way if you use it often.

From then on, use the Start menu shortcut rather than the copy you first ran, because that's the installed one. If you saved publications before installing, they're unaffected; they're just .ozp files wherever you left them, and now they'll open in Publish when you double-click them.

The .ozp file link

Associating .ozp files with Publish is the part that makes daily use easier. A publication sitting in your Documents folder, in an e-mail attachment you've saved or on a memory stick opens in Publish with a double-click. An .ozp is a ZIP that holds the document and its pictures together, so a single file carries everything it needs from one PC to another.

If someone sends you an .ozp and you don't have Publish yet, install it this way and the file will open. That's handy for clubs and committees where one person makes the newsletter and another checks it.

Good to know

Because it lives in your own programs folder, Publish keeps working even if the computer's shared program folders are locked down. It's also free software with no account to sign in to, so once it's installed there's nothing more to set up before you start a publication.

Other Zaweba apps that work with Publish, such as Pub Converter by Zaweba for bringing in old .pub files, PDF by Zaweba for looking at exports and Paint by Zaweba for editing pictures, are found by Publish through the suite's own registration. Install those you want in the same way and the links between them start working.

Install for this user is a small menu item, but it removes one of the most common stumbling blocks on shared and managed PCs. Run it once, and Publish by Zaweba sits in the Start menu like any other program, ready for the next flyer.