How to silently install Office 2016

You’re needing to install Office 2016 on several machines on your network. You can silently install Office 2016, and with a little prep work you can get a deployment underway in no time at all. To start, you’ll need to create a MSP file using the Office Customization tool that’s ready for deployment.

Using the OCT (Office Customization Tool)

First, you’ll need to unpack or copy the contents of the Office 2016 ISO to a location on your machine (that you are using PDQ Deploy on) or on a network share. Make sure you have the setup.exe and that it contains the admin directory (you’ll need that in order to use the OCT).

Drag the setup.exe to Start > Run, and append /admin to the setup.exe path to open the OCT (c:\path\to\Officefiles\setup.exe /admin) . Once you have the OCT open, you’re ready to customize your Office installation. Give it a good look over, but for sake of time/interest, here are the basic customizations you’ll need to make to install this silently.

Licensing and user interface

You’ll want to set your display level to None and check Suppress modal. There’s also the inevitable EULA you’ll have to accept.

Modify setup properties

In this section you’ll add two property values. (Again, these are just the essentials. Click here to see a complete list of property values.)

• Name: SETUP_REBOOT Value: Never

• Name: HIDEUPDATEUI Value: True

Between these two values, your install will not ask your user to reboot, nor will it reboot. (If you’d like to reboot your machines after install, use the reboot step in PDQ Deploy when deploying. This will give you a lot more control over when and how the reboot takes place.)

The Auto_Activate property value does not work for Office 2016, you can read up on some possible workarounds here.

Set feature installation states

Set your installation states as appropriate for your environment. Need help knowing what to configure it to? Read up on your options here.

Other considerations

Check settings in the following areas to help your users maintain their current settings.

• Outlook Profile

• Modify User Settings

Now you’re ready to save your MSP file for silent deployment! It’s a simple File > Save, it should save your MSP in the same directory as the Office setup.exe file.

Silently install Office 2016

With PDQ Deploy you can get your deployment underway in moments. First, create a new package. (File > New Package or Ctrl + N).

• By default, an install step is available. Put in the setup.exe file for the Install File

• Add silent parameters. For Office 2016 that would be /adminfile [name of MSP file]

• Check Include Entire Directory. Don’t miss this step. If you don’t check this your install will fail.

If you have PDQ Deploy you can set conditions to specify OS and architecture types to deploy to in the conditions tab. You can also add a step to reboot machines after Office is successfully installed. A reboot will likely be required so this is a good way make sure your installation is complete.