Regardless of how you update, the apps need to be restarted. You shouldn't apply software updates to any app while it's running.

@pbowden with Microsoft has been tackling the Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) problems with deferrals and the countdown in the #microsoft-office channel in MacAdmins Slack. He's posted a couple of test builds that you may want to help test and give some feedback. Help him and you help yourself (and other admins)!

MAU is still one of the best ways to deploy updates because it's configurable, automatic and reduces download sizes dramatically. It downloads silently and waits to apps to restart to install. And it's very quick.

@talkingmoose I haven't looked at MAU in quite some time. Can you tell me if it's possible to do updates with it when no user is logged in? On my end I'd like to have a consistent system for handling updates and when I last looked at MAU, it only seemed to work when a user was logged in.

@Captainamerica and @talkingmoose Be aware that none of the MAU test builds that @pbowden has posted in the #microsoft-autoupdate Slack channel resolve the issue(s) with forced updates. but his last comments in that channel indicate the June update should resolve them.

I have been using the MAU, but think there are constantly changes that again causes issues, so I am really tired of using a product that seem to be changed very often and causing bugs. So hoped there was a different way

Yes Apps of course have to be restarted to be updated, but looking for a way to force restart of office apps, as these slide-in notification that restart must happen the daily user just ignore

@Captainamerica I definitely feel your pain on this, and I think it's safe to say there have been some communication issues with the team currently responsible for MAU regarding its failure to function as described/expected. @pbowden's recent investigative work has reassured me the issues have been raised with the appropriate parties inside Microsoft that can drive them to resolution. Hopefully in the June update.

I'm sure there is a better way, but I've been using the 2019/2016 "Update packages" at this site: Office Updates.

No more weird issues from users, especially with Outlook crashing. It's annoying to download all these packages separately, but it works without issues for me. I get the rest of the updates like MAU, Skype and One Drive from macadmins site.

I will give it a last shot here in with the June update. But I don´t hope we again end up with a fix that few weeks later again brake, as a new version then just suddenly break what was fixed earlier.

@Captainamerica 🤞that they fix both the code in MAU, and the QA testing matrix that should be used to validate a release, so that the problems don't reappear.

@Captainamerica I definitely appreciate your patience while we sort out these quality issues.

Hello,
Jamf has option for "push/force" updates on 0365 apps. Not sure if you have used it.. but for us it does not seem to work.
I am here looking for a solution to AUTO magically patch my 0365 apps NOT using MAU and not using JAMFs builtin pgk upload patch management utility as there is NO control of when and what times it pushes updates.
Any thing helps... thank you..