Installing Click-to-Run Office Suite

With Office 365, installation and products are tied to user’s accounts, making it difficult to set up a computer with an Office install before giving it to the user. Click-to-Run Deployment will allow you to have Office fully installed on the computer, then the first time the user runs any of the Office programs (i.e. Word, Excel, etc) they will be asked to log in with their Office 365 account credentials, thus licensing the product. Below are instructions on how to download, configure, and install the Click-to-Run Office suite. 

 The Quick and Dirty

If you want to just download and go, and not read any of my lovely documentation, here’s everything below packed up in a nice ZIP file. Does not include the Office download, so you’ll still need to run setup.exe /download download.xml

https://github.com/Omnialias/OfficeInstaller

Step-by-step guide

• Go to either here for Office 2013 and here for Office 2016 to download the Deployment Tool.
   
• Run the installer that you get, which will extract two files to the location you specify: setup.exe and configuration.xml.
   
• The setup.exe file can be used with three switches, which can be found by using the /? switch, which yields the below statement:
  setup.exe /?
  Usage:
SETUP mode [path to configuration file]
SETUP /download [path to configuration file]
SETUP /configure [path to configuration file]
SETUP /packager [path to configuration file] [output path]
SETUP /help [path to configuration file]
/download Downloads files to create an Office15 installation source
/configure Adds, removes, or configures an Office15 installation
/packager Produces an Office App-V package from an Office installation source
/help - Prints this message
  We are concerned with the first two switches, /download and /configure. 
  • /Download will download the Office version described in the configuration file provided, but in CAB files and not an executable.
  • /Configuration will install Office using the downloaded CAB files.
     
•  The contents of the configuration file is listed below:
  <Configuration>
<!--  <Add SourcePath="\\Server\Share\" OfficeClientEdition="32" >
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
<Product ID="VisioProRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
</Add>  --> 

<!--  <Updates Enabled="TRUE" UpdatePath="\\Server\Share\" /> -->
<!--  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />  -->
<!--  <Logging Path="%temp%" />  -->
<!--  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" />  --></Configuration>
  
  Using this as a framework, we will create two .xml files: download.xml to be used with the /download switch to download the version of Office we want to install, and install.xml to be used with the /configuration switch to install what we’ve downloaded. Both of these files should be saved to the same location that setup.exe and configuration.xml are. For this example, we’ll call this ~\OfficeInstall\
   
• For the download.xml file, what works for me is listed below. 
  <Configuration> 
<Add OfficeClientEdition="32" >
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
</Add> 
<Updates Enabled="FALSE" />
<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
<Logging Path="C:\Office Log" />
<Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" /> 
</Configuration>
  
  For the Product ID, that value needs to match the version of Office that you plan to install. Follow the guide here. In my example, the majority of my users own Office 365 Enterprise E3, so I have O365ProPlusRetail as the Product ID. Make sure to change that as necessary. The CAB files will be downloaded to ~\OfficeInstall\Office\Data\.
   
• For the install.xml file, what works for me is listed below:
  <Configuration> 
<Add OfficeClientEdition="32" >
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
</Add> 
<Updates Enabled="FALSE" />
<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
<Logging Path="C:\Office Log" />
<Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" /> 
</Configuration>
  
  A couple of notes here. I’ve removed the Source Path and disabled the Updates because those two are unnecessary. The Source Path is asking for the location of the CAB files, but those will just be in the same location as the rest of your files. This is here in case you want to put the CAB files on a network share, but it doesn’t look like doing it this way has yielded great results for people. Instead, everyone suggest leaving the CAB files local. Again, note the Product ID here is set to the version of Office we are installing. Finally, there are logs being written to at the location of the logging path. Feel free to change that to what you would like. 
   
• Now that we have those two files created and saved to the location of setup.exe and configuration.xml, we need one last thing. Some way to start the setup. You can use the command line to do it, but here’s a nice, double-clickable cmd file. This can come in handy if you are deploying through MDT. Also gives you some sort of visual to tell you if the installer has finished. 
  @echo
offpushd
%~dp0
echo Installing Office 365 Pro Plus Retail x86setup.exe /CONFIGURE install.xml
  
• After all of that, it’s time to do some work. Go to the command line and navigate to ~\OfficeInstall. Then type in: setup.exe /download download.xmlThis will download the specified version of Office’s CAB files to ~\OfficeInstall\Office\Data\.
   
• Now you’re ready to go. Go to your command line, navigate back to ~\OfficeInstall and typeinstall.cmdThat will run the installer, the command line should say” Installing Office 365 Pro Plus Retail” and when it’s done, should send you back to the command line. 
   
• Office should now be installed. The first time you open Word or Excel, you should be prompted to enter your Office 365 credentials.