Part 1:
Some of you might have come across the arguably horrible new way Microsoft distributes the regular Office to find out there are no customization anymore with 2013-2016. You don’t want Groove or Outlook installed or you want to install Office on another partition, too bad. Sure, there are some technical advantages to click-to-run, but Office has become such a hassle to install with the way it asks for the product key, it can be quite annoying. Plus, it can be so hard sometimes to avoid logging into Office to activate it you wonder if it is done on purpose to discourage you from not doing it.
Warning : if you use Office 365, I don’t know if the following applies to you. It might, but I haven’t tested it. This is for the retail version of Office that you pay only once and that comes with only a product key on a card. My instructions are for 2016, but I did it with 2013 too and it works fine.
If you wonder what version you should get, here is my opinion. I think I could qualify as an Office power user and I don’t find any feature update since 2007 that justify paying for it more than once every 10 years at home, although I love Office and there are sometimes nice features added. So to me, no Office365 that keeps changing. I will pay once for whatever version is selling at the moment I have to buy. 2010 is great, better than 2007 if you find it for cheap and then you don’t need what is below. 2016 is more polished than 2013 and they both offer the ability to have multiple Excel windows seen at the same time. 2013 has ugly uppercases menus.
There is a way to customize the installation of 2013-2016. I will share what I did right after the usual disclaimer: always do backups, don’t do it if you don’t fully understand what you are doing or if you are not ready to accept full responsibility for it. What is provided here is only information about what I did in case it can help some people do their own research.
Ok, so you need to create an xml file called Office2016config.xml.
In it, you put a configuration similar to this one, adapted to your needs:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<Configuration>
<Add SourcePath=”C:\Office2016″ OfficeClientEdition=”64″ >
<Product ID=”HomeBusinessRetail”>
<Language ID=”en-us” />
<!– everything that is not excluded here but is part of the product ID you chose will be installed –>
<!– <ExcludeApp ID=”Outlook” /> –>
<ExcludeApp ID=”OneNote” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Lync” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Groove” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Access” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”InfoPath” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Project” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Publisher” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”SharePointDesigner” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Visio” />
</Product>
</Add>
<Updates Enabled=”TRUE” />
<Display Level=”Full” AcceptEULA=”TRUE” />
<!– <Logging Path=”%temp%” /> –>
<Property Name=”AUTOACTIVATE” Value=”1″ />
</Configuration>
Please note in this file I specify the 64 bits version (the number 64 in OfficeClientEdition). You might want to use 32 instead if you have legacy add-ins or apps that rely on 32 bits Office. Microsoft recommends using 32 bits.
However, I found that there was synchronization issues with Outlook and Itunes that could only be resolved by using the 64 bits edition after a bad click-to-run unavoidable update, so I install the 64 bits edition, plus I don’t have any dependency on 32 bits Office. I always ran 64 bits since 2010 and never had an issue, but then again my setup is very simple, I use no legacy software (or software that have legacy code that interacts with Office 32).
Pay attention to the language version you want to install. I used en-us for English US.
Note that the <!– beginning a line are comments, so this means this line is ignored. So, in my example, Outlook is installed because the line excluding it is commented. A comment started must be ended with /> if you add one. If you remove one, like if you want to not install Outlook, remove the <!– and remove also the /> at the end of the line.
Pay attention to the productId. I used the Home and Business version in my example. This is the one that contains Outlook. The one without Outlook is HomeStudentRetail. Those who have Professional might use ProfessionalRetail. Online, you will find other productID, including some for Office 365.
Now that your file is ready, put it in C:\Office2016 (the path I put in the configuration file and that I will refer to as the setup folder, from which you install).
Now, download the Office Customization Tool at
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030
Extract the setup.exe file and place it in C:\Office2016.
Now you can download the files:
Use a command prompt to go to the setup folder (C:\Office2016). Then type
setup.exe /download .\Office2016config.xml
This will take a while to download the setup files.
