Updating Office 2016?

musat
Contributor III

Hello,
We are just getting to switching to Office 2016. I have been going through the old posts about installing and updating. Learning about ChoiceChangesXML files and all. In my research I have come up with two questions:
1) Is there an easy method of utilizing a ChoiceChangesXML file? Right now I am putting the XML file and the original PKG file into a folder, packaging them with Composer, and creating a postinstall script that runs installer with the applyChoiceChangesXML option. Though now I see that it looks like I'll need to do this with the update file as well, as it doesn't update just the already installed applications. I am using the ChoiceChanges file to not install Outlook. But Outlook gets installed when applying the update.
2) Is there a way to get the initial load of the Office applications to not prompt for a Microsoft login? We don't use OneDrive for anything here, so I don't want staff and students to get confused about what login it is asking for.

Thanks,
Tim Musa

4 REPLIES 4

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

@musat Run, don't walk, to the Microsoft Office 2016 site for Mac Admins: macadmins.software You'll find individual installers there along with a lot of documentation, including how to set up a Microsoft AutoUpdate Caching Server

You'll also find several useful Office 2016 article's on Rich Trouton's blog: derflounder.wordpress.com/category/office-2016/

dcgagne
Contributor

1) Not sure. Our solution was to run the naked installer from the volume license download and run a post install script to register all office apps with Microsoft Auto Update, remove Outlook, and apply a configuration profile to for MAU to "Download and Install Updates Automatically). It's inelegant but works for our purposes

2) Have a look at Rich Troutons post install script [
https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/tree/master/rtrouton_scripts/disable_office_2016_first_run_settings](
https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/tree/master/rtrouton_scripts/disable_office_2016_first_run_settings).

mrhollywoodgate
New Contributor II

This thread was very helpful: https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/22853/best-practices-for-automating-office-2016-updates

I have gone with creating a launch agent for registering the applications and a configuration profile for enforcing autoupdate.

musat
Contributor III

I came across the Choices Packager from @talkingmoose in a different JAMF Nation thread. That script seems to do exactly what I was hoping for. Just a straightforward way to modify the original Installer package to "unselect" a few of the options and not have them installed by default.

I then run a script including a few of the settings highlighted by @rtrouton on his fabulous web site.

Very easy method to install Office 2016 15.38 with the initial settings desired.