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Deploying Office 2019 or Office 365

 ·  ☕ 4 min read

If you’re familiar with deploying Office 2016 or any previous version, then the first big change when looking into Office 2019 or Office 365 is that there is no longer an MSI installer. Office 2019/Office 365 is now only available as a ‘Click-to-Run’ installation, which means we’ll need to change how we package, deploy and update Office 2019 or Office 365. Links to sites used in this post:

Configuration of the Office 2019/Office 365 install is now done via an XML file. You can generate one on the Office 365 Client Configuration Service, however before you do you’ll need to be aware of some of the changes regarding how updates are handled in Office 2019/Office 365. If you currently use WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) then you’ll see that there’s an entry for Office 2019 and Office 365 in the product list, however in my testing this doesn’t actually do anything. Updates for Office 2019/Office 365 are handled completely differently due to the Click-to-Run installation. To manage updates, you can use SCCM, a local network path, or simply download the updates from the Office CDN (Content Distribution Network). When configuring your Office configuration XML file, you can specify the location that Office should get updates from. I’m going to be using a local network path for this post. Once Office is installed it will periodically check for updates from the location specified. You can keep this location up to date by using the Office Deployment Tool which I cover later in this post. Office 2019/Office 365 updates separately from Windows update, you can see all the Office scheduled tasks in Task Scheduler, under Microsoft/Office.

Preparation for Deployment of Office 2019/Office 365

  1. The first thing to do is to download the Office Deploy Tool (ODT) from Microsoft.
  2. Now we need to generate an Office configuration file using the Office 365 Client Configuration Service.
  3. Below is the configuration file I generated that I’m using for this walkthrough. With this file I will be:
    • Deploying a volume licensed Office 2019 64-bit with Visio and Project Professional 2019.
    • I’m excluding OneDrive, Groove, and OneNote.
    • The Office 2019 installer will automatically remove older versions of Office applications.
    • Licensing and activation will be via an Office 2019 KMS key and Active Directory-based activation.
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<Configuration ID="alotofnumbers-and-letters">
  <Info Description="Information for a description" />
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="PerpetualVL2019" SourcePath="\\contoso.com\NETLOGON\office-19-x64" AllowCdnFallback="FALSE" ForceUpgrade="TRUE">
    <Product ID="ProPlus2019Volume" PIDKEY="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX">
      <Language ID="MatchOS" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneNote" />
    </Product>
    <Product ID="VisioPro2019Volume" PIDKEY="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX">
      <Language ID="MatchOS" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneNote" />
    </Product>
    <Product ID="ProjectPro2019Volume" PIDKEY="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX">
      <Language ID="MatchOS" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="OneNote" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Property Name="SharedComputerLicensing" Value="0" />
  <Property Name="PinIconsToTaskbar" Value="FALSE" />
  <Property Name="SCLCacheOverride" Value="0" />
  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="FALSE" />
  <Updates Enabled="TRUE" UpdatePath="\\contoso.com\NETLOGON\office-19-x64" />
  <RemoveMSI />
  <AppSettings>
    <Setup Name="Company" Value="Contoso Corp" />
  </AppSettings>
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
  <Logging Level="Off" />
</Configuration>

Downloading Office 2019/Office 365

Once you have your Office configuration .XML file and the Office Deployment Tool we’re ready to download Office ready to install.

  1. Create a folder for your Office installation. For this example, I’m deploying Office 2019 64 bit, so I’ll create a folder called Office-19-x64.
  2. Once you’ve created the folder, put the Office Deployment Tool and Office configuration .XML in the folder.
  3. Open up a command line prompt and make sure the current directory is inside the Office folder you created.
  4. Run the following command to download Office from the Office CDN:
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setup.exe /download config-19-x64.xml

The Office Deployment Tool will download the Office products configured in the configuration file. If you specified a local network path for the install source location, the files will be downloaded to that location. The Office Deployment Tool will create a folder called Office. Whenever you run the above command, the Office Deployment Tool will sync the version of Office in the download location with the Office CDN for the configured version in the configuration file.

Installing Office 2019/Office 365

To install Office, we’ll need to run the Office Deployment Tool once again from the command line. If you haven’t already you should put the Office files downloaded previously, the Office Deployment Tool and the configuration file all in the same folder. Keep the downloaded Office files in the folder called Office.

On the computer you wish to deploy Office to, run the following command:

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PATH-TO-OFFICE-DEPLOYMENT-TOOL\setup.exe /configure PATH-TO-OFFICE-CONFIGURATION-FILE\config-19-x64.xml

After some time, Office should be installed as per your preferences set in the configuration file.

Group Policy for Office 2019/Office 365

The ADMX files for Office 2019 and Office 365 are backwards compatible with Office 2016 and are available for download from Microsoft here.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

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