In this post we are going to create application for Office 2016 which can be deployed through SCCM. Before doing anything on SCCM, we need to customize the Office 2016 setup so that it can install the required components silently (without any user interaction).

Let’s begin with copying the Office 2016 setup folder to your SCCM Library. I have copied to content to “D:\Source\Application\Microsoft Office 2016” on SCCM Server.

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Create msp file using Microsoft Office Customization Tool.

We are going to create msp file which is just like an answer file, here we can select the components we need to install and set other options which shows during installation phase. For this demo, I will proceed with installation of Word, Excel, PowerPoint & Outlook.

Run Command Prompt (in elevated mode) and navigate to d:\source\Application\Microsoft Office 2016.
Run command: setup.exe /Admin.

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This will open Microsoft Office Customization tool. Select “Create a new setup customization file for the following product”. This will automatically pick the Office product we have used, click on OK.

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Navigate to “Licensing and user interface” and check the box “I accept the terms in the License Agreement“, Select Display Level as “Basic” out of 2 other options (Full & None). With “Basic” level selected, we will be able to see the installation happening however it won’t allow us to select any option. Check the box “Suppress Modal.

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Navigate to Features \ Modify user settings. Under Middle Pane, navigate to Microsoft Office 2016 \ Privacy \ Trust Center
Make changes under “Disable Opt-in Wizard on first run” by selecting enabling this option.

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Navigate to Features \ Set feature installation states. For Microsoft Access : select the option “Not available” as I don’t wan’t to get this installed. For

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For “Microsoft Excel”, select the option “Run all from My Computer” as we want to get excel installed.

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Make changes for other applications as well to like this:

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Save the msp file with the name CustomOffice.msp, make sure to save it under folder updates as this will help us not specifying the msp file name. Anything under “Updates” folder gets installed automatically whether it is list of other msp files or patches.

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Preparation for UnInstallation

Silent Uninstallation of Office requires 2 components:
1. Product Name : We can find this information in proplus.ww\config.xml with title “Configuration Product”, in this case it is ProPlus.
2. xml file

Navigate to folder “proplus.ww”, make a copy of config.xml and rename the copied file to “Uninstall.xml”. Edit the “Uninstall.xml” file in Notepad. This is the default configuration displayed, we need to make some changes here.

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We must remove the remarks from 2nd line by deleting “<!–” from beginning and “–>” from end.
Make Display Level as “None”, CompletionNotice as “No”, SuppressModal as “Yes” and AcceptEula as “Yes”

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Create Application under SCCM Console

Open SCCM console, navigate to Software Library \ Application Management \ Application, right click and select “Create Application”. Select “Automatically detect information about this application from installation files“. Click on “Browse” and select proplusww.msi located under d:\source\Application\Microsoft Office 2016\proplus.ww. There can be another another folder in your case depending upon the Office version you are using, it can be Standard.ww or something else. Click on next to continue.

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Under “General Information”, you will be able to see “Installation Program”, lets not make any changes now, however we will be making changes at later stage with appropriate command line. Click next to continue.

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Once Application creation is successful. Right click “Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016” and select Properties, click on tab “Deployment Types

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Select the existing Deployment types and click on edit to open Windows installer properties.

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Click on tab “Content“, under “Content Location” delete proplus.ww so that only \\SCCM01\d$\Source\Application\Microsoft Office 2016 is displayed, pointing to proplus.ww will not provide all content while installation, we need to specify root directory.

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Click on tab “Programs“, we will see default command line populated for both “Installation program” and “Uninstall program“.

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  • Change “Installation program” to “setup.exe” (Note: As we have saved CustomOffice.msp under Updates folder, there is no need to specify the location of msp, if we would have saved CustomOffice.msp under root of the installation folder, then we have to use following command line “setup.exe /adminfile CustomOffice.msp
  • We could have also used Command line: “setup.exe /config proplus.ww\config.xml /adminfile updates\CustomOffice.msp” which will give same results as setup.exe as we have only 1 xml and 1 msp file present in default location, hence both command lines are equivalent in this case.
  • Change “Uninstallation program” to “setup.exe /Uninstall Proplus /config proplus.ww\Uninstall.xml
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We are done with the application settings, we need to distribute the application on DP before deploying it.

Once application is distributed, we will deploy it now. Right click the application and click on deploy”, select the collection and click on Next.

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Specify the action as “Install” and purpose as “Available”

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Lets logon to one of the workstations, open “Software Center”, initiate the installation of “Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016

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It will take some time to install the Office Product, meanwhile you can verify the installation by looking into Task Manager as office 2016 will create BootStrapper.

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After some time, you can see the Office Product got installed successfully. There are 2 different sort of logs to verify this.

SCCM Logs
Verify AppEnforce.log located under c:\windows\ccm\logs, here you can see command line used for Office 2016 installation and at last we can see successful installation as exit code 0

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Office Installation Logs
During Office installation, it creates its own logs under temp directory. Open %temp% through Windows + Run. Look for the latest logs as per the time stamp. Open the log file and verify the return code 0 in last line.

There could another location as well ie. c:\windows\temp

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Important Tips

  • If there are any conflicting settings between the .MSP file you created through Office Customization tool and your Config.xml file, the Config.xml file settings will win.
  • Multiple msp’s can be kept under “Updates” folder, however last msp settings (as per naming convention order) will be applied.
  • If you have just 1 msp under “Updates” folder, use Installation command line as “setup.exe
  • If you have multiple msp’s under “Updates” folder, then also installation command line as “setup.exe” is to be used.
  • If you have multiple msp’s under Root folder, then use following command line “Setup.exe /adminfile mspname.msp
  • If xml file is not formatted correctly in terms of any missing character, bracket open / close missing, then installation / uninstallation will not run correctly if xml file is called.
  • To verify xml is correct, open the file in “Internet Explorer“, if it displays the content, this means it is formatted correctly.
  • Use “Setup.exe /?” to explore more on various switches to be used
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