Office 2016 Update Files

[lpadmin]

Hello All,

I am in the process of switching from Office 2011 to Office 2016. I am currently trying to find where I can get the update files for 2016. I used to go to this link Office Page for 2011 to get the updates, but it appears that it has changed to just a place to buy Office. Does anyone know where to find the update files for 2016?

Thanks in Advance

[ryan_s]

@talkingmoose -- I used your link and created an easy script to run after updates have been applied. For those interested:

#!/bin/sh

# Created by Ryan.S, Oct 23rd 2015
# Ref: https://osxbytes.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/not-much-whats-new-with-you/
# Ref: https://github.com/talkingmoose/Outlook-Exchange-Setup-5.0/tree/master/Configuration%20Profiles%20and%20Plists


    # Set Office 2016 What's New as "Completed"
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word OUIWhatsNewLastShownLink -string 624953
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel OUIWhatsNewLastShownLink -string 624954
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.PowerPoint OUIWhatsNewLastShownLink -string 624955
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook OUIWhatsNewLastShownLink -string 624956

exit 0

[talkingmoose]

Hi, @ryan.s!

I see your script is writing once to the main /Library/Preferences folder instead of writing to each user's sandboxed preferences folder, which is ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.application/Data/Library/Preferences.

Have you tested the preferences work from that location?

[FritzsCorner]

@talkingmoose / @ryan.s

I decided to give this a try and in my testing it works just fine as a system wide preference. I also looked at this blog post by Tim Sutton and it looks like he came to the same conclusion for some of the other settings.

Here are other application domains that seem to look for the same preference key (Outlook and OneNote seem to have their own additional “welcome” panes; see Outlook’s FirstRunExperienceCompletedO15, for example): com.microsoft.Outlook com.microsoft.PowerPoint com.microsoft.Excel com.microsoft.Word com.microsoft.onenote.mac

[ronb]

We have been trying to find a delta update for Microsoft Office 2016 that works for us since moving to 2016. What we've been doing is this -
Simply install the apps manually on our lab machine that has Casper tools, then drag the five Office apps into Composer that will dump the apps straight to Macintosh HD:Applications. We then have a preinstall script in the package that deletes the 5 existing applications before installing the new versions. Because we have separate package for the serialization, this is a pretty simple package that we just reuse in Composer for each new version of the suite. The only problem? This package is nearly 4GB.
All of our packages are cached to users machines then we have a weekly log out policy (Thursday evening) that installs all cached packages and runs Apple Software updates as well as some maintenance routines. It's just something all Mac users account for when logging out on Thursdays before leaving for lunch, or before leaving at the end of the day.

So Office 2016 15.24 come out yesterday (July 12th, 2016) and we thought we would have another go at the update, which is only 1.6GB. We first tried just dumping Microsofts "Update" package directly into Casper Admin. But it errors out when the jss tries to download it to the users systems. Thinking it was because it was another funky package, which we have seen in the past with Microsoft and Adobe install packages, we created a Composer package that installs the Microsoft installer into a Library folder. The Composer package has a preinstall script to delete the old versions of Office first, then the installer dumps the Microsoft update package into the Library folder, and then a post Install script has a command line to use Apple's installer on the Microsoft installer, and then another command line to delete the Microsoft package. Unfortunately Apples installer still doesn't work on Microsoft's package in this manner either (probably for the same reason - which is maybe because Microsoft's installer requires user involvement?). So we're back to our simple 4GB package. It works.

Any other, more efficient methods anyone? I'd love to hear it.

[talkingmoose]

@ronb, I covered this in my presentation with Paul Bowden (from Microsoft) a couple of weeks ago at PSU MacAdmins. (I expect that video should be online within the next couple of weeks.)

Simply put, if you're updating more than two Office apps, you're better off applying the full 1.5 GB installer as if it were an update. Microsoft supports this method.

With that said, Paul did announce he's working on Microsoft AutoUpdate 4.0, which can run silently. We don't have all the specifics, but MAU already updates using deltas, the total of which are smaller than the 1.5 GB installer. If your environment supports allowing MAU to connect and download updates, then this may be a solution in the near future.

[ronb]

@talkingmoose, thanks for you response. That definitely coincides with what I've found as far as package sizes. The only problem is, we can't seem to get the "Microsoft" package to either download to the clients from Casper, or run appropriately from a shell command with Apples "Installer" app. Maybe we're just missing something. Any suggestions on that regard?

For MAU 4.0, I gather you are talking about users execute MAU updates themselves? If so, would they run for the users with "Standard" accounts? Would there be a way for Casper to trigger these updates thru MAU?
Or shall I just wait for the video, that explains it all? https://www.youtube.com/user/psumacconf?

[dpertschi]

I've taken the approach of simply deploying the entire suite installer each month without issue or concern. I certainly prefer the old 2011 119MB combo updater, but bloated sandboxed apps are all the rage now, cache it for install.

@ronb I'm pulling the O365 installer from http://macadmins.software uploading to Casper as-is and it deploys fine from both AFP and SMB DP file shares. What sort of DP's are you using?

@talkingmoose On the subject of MAU, I follow along with the chatter on the Office Slack channel, but it is easy to miss stuff-- like when you need to focus on production work! In addition to command line MAU, do I understand right that we now have, or will in the near future, the ability to host updates internally and decide what can/cannot be 'published' to MAU?

[ronb]

dpertschi, I've been using the macadmins.software site to get the installers as well.

We have dp's at our three largest offices - our two remote dp's are a single Mac Mini's with Mac OS 10.11.5. We put large SSD's in them for Casper packages, Apple SUS, and Netbooting. Only at our home office where I'm at do we have two Mac Mini's. We dedicate one for the JSS and the master dp; the other is for Apple SUS and Netbooting. Pretty straight forward, simple setup. We really appreciate the KISS policy.

We have been contemplating getting away from Apple SUS altogether and just use Apple Caching instead. Anyone have any experience going that route?

[betty02]

Would running the full installer not replace all files that hold the users data such as Outlook email accounts? We you'd have to set them up again?

Maybe I'm wrong and this is kept separate int he User Data folder in Documents? Not entirely sure, but not something I fancy!!

[Josh_Smith]

@betty02 No, re-running the current full installer updates the apps without changing any user data. As Bill mentioned it is a supported/tested update method. I've used it successfully since Office2016 came out with no ill-effects.

@ronb The Office2016 installers have worked without modification for me every time, I don't think people normally have issues with them, this ain't Adobe :) Just download the full suite, drag the pkg to Casper Admin, and deploy. If that isn't working there is something wonky with your config...if you post some errors/logs from the failed installs maybe we can figure it out.

[betty02]

@Josh.Smith Always good to know you've never had any issues! How does it work for users with Office applications open when it tries to install? Will it fail and then try again after the fail log has been flushed? Or does it quit the app and install the update?

[Josh_Smith]

I don't think it quits the app for you, but the apps should not be open during update. Running a Before script that quits the apps if a user is logged in is probably a good idea, either forcefully or with user interaction.

[ronb]

betty02,
This scenario is one of the main reasons we perform cache policies, and then have a logout policy once a week to install all cached packages.

[endor-moon]

Hi All,

I've been using the package the VL license and just install the standalone updates method, using binaries from the macadmins site. Then recently I started seeing errors like this:

<Word icon> Compile error in hidden module: 'link'. This
error commonly occurs when code is
incompatible with the server, platform, or
architecture of this application.

So I've gone back to installing from our site license software installer and letting all the updates install themselves. I also saw a lot of problems with the Word 64-bit update hanging in the middle of the update. Since going back to the full installer all these issues went away.

[RobertHammen]

@endor-moon By chance do you have Adobe Acrobat (XI or DC) installed on your Macs? That compile error is thrown due to a non-64-bit plugin. Latest version of Acrobat DC (15.020.20039) addresses this... has nothing to do with your Office 2016 deployment methodology/choice of package.