Pushing Updates for MS Office Pro Plus

[ktaylor25]

Hello. I am trying to create an updated package for MS Office 2016 Pro Plus. The installer that I have is about 6 months old. It works fine.. when I install it on a machine, our users are able to sign in with their network account and everything works fine. However, if I download the updates from MS Office Update History and push those, then when a user logs in, they see a message that says their account is "read only", and they get the option to continue in offline mode.

So, I tried making a new package using Composer. I take a snapshot, then install Office and run all updates, then take the second snapshot. I then apply permissions to all enclosed items for each root-level folder. On my package-creation machine.. the update works fine and I can sign into Office no problem. But when I use that package and install it on another machine, I get the same issue as stated above.. account is "read only" and I can continue in offline mode, or quit.

Has any of you experienced this before? Any advice on how to keep Office up-to-date without breaking the "Pro Plus" designation?

Much Thanks

[bpavlov]

Do a search on this site but the short of it is that you do not need to package Office 2016 for Mac. The installers that Microsoft profiles will install all the Office for Mac apps and include the Auto Update tool as well by default. Perhaps others will be a bit more detailed, but hopefully that's enough to get you started and searching here. You can always join the MacAdmins Slack http://macadmins.slack.com as well and check out the #microsoft-office channel where you have microsoft employees and other mac admins who have gone through deployment of Office 2016.

[atat5500]

So far what I've been doing is using smart groups based off of the Office Application versions and using those to deploy the update packages accordingly. We use our Volume License .pkg installer for the original Office Install, then download the update only packages from here to be deployed through the policies. Haven't run into any issues with them breaking the volume licensing thus far, but make sure to adjust package priorities if you want to include them with the Volume Installer so it runs before the update packages in a workflow. If Office is already installed, then the update packages should deploy and install with no problem.

[koalatee · Accepted solution]

Ok, so first I would read through this: https://clburlison.com/demystify-office2016/

And echoing @bpavlov, join the macadmins slack and come to #microsoft-office for even more information, links, and help.

For Office 2016 you need to install the Volume License (sounds like this is what you're using) on each machine when a user is logged in. You cannot copy the license from one to another - this sounds like it may be the reason you have 'read-only'. The VL.pkg writes a unique key onto each machine to license it.

What most people generally do is grab the VL.pkg from the MSDN download and separately grab the pkg installer from https://macadmins.software/ - this site is managed by the Office for Mac lead at Microsoft. The VL.pkg can be installed separately from Office, so you can just update with the newest version of the Office suite as it is available.

[ktaylor25]

Got it solved. When I run the updates from Microsoft's website, it breaks the volume licensing.. but the Office volume license installer comes with a serializer. So, after I run the updates, I run that serializer as well, and that seems to fix it. I appreciate all the responses.

Thanks!