Follow this simple guide to get your Office 2016 deployment up and running with SCCM 2012 R2

First we need to download the Office 2016 Deployment Tool from Microsoft

You can find it here

Run the tool and install it to a location of your liking, I choose e:\temp\Office 2016

When you look in that folder you’ll find a setup.exe and a sample configuration file.

Download the content

In order to download the Office 2016 installation files, we first need to create a download file

So fire up your favorite text editor and enter the following

<Configuration>

<Add SourcePath="e:\temp\office2016\x64 EN" OfficeClientEdition="64" >

  <Product ID="ProPlusRetail">

      <Language ID="en-us" />

    </Product>

  </Add>  

</Configuration>

Save it with the name “download x64 en.xml”

Now start a command prompt and navigate to the folder where you installed the Office 2016 Deployment Tool

Now run this command: setup /download “download x64 en.xml”

When the program is complete you’ll have a new folder called x64 EN in your folder

Now copy the file “download x64 en.xml” and rename the new file to “download x86 en.xml”

Open the new file and change the content to match the following

<Configuration>

<Add SourcePath="e:\temp\office2016\x86 EN" OfficeClientEdition="32" >

  <Product ID="ProPlusRetail">

      <Language ID="en-us" />

    </Product>

  </Add>  

</Configuration>

Save the file and run this command: setup /download “download x86 en.xml”

When program is complete you’ll have additional folder called x86 EN

If you, like me, use a language that is not English, you can download localized versions of Office 2016 like follows

Download the localized version

Like before copy your “download x64 en.xml” and rename the new file to “download x64 da.xml”

Open the file and change the content to match the following

<Configuration>

<Add SourcePath="e:\temp\office2016\x86 DA" OfficeClientEdition="64" >

  <Product ID="ProPlusRetail">

      <Language ID="da-dk" />

    </Product>

  </Add>  

</Configuration>

Save the file and run this command: setup /download “download x64 da.xml”

When program is complete you’ll have additional folder called x64 DA

Configuration files for Office 2016

Copy the “setup.exe” to the folder where you downloaded the Office files, a copy for each folder.

So now your folder looks something like this

In order to have SCCM do a silent and unattended installation of Office 2016 we need to create a configuration for setup.exe

Again fire up your favorite text editor and create a file like this

<Configuration>

    <Add OfficeClientEdition="64">

        <Product ID="ProPlusRetail" PIDKEY="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX">

            <Language ID="en-us" />

        </Product>

    </Add>

    <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />

</Configuration>

You can leave out the PIDKEY value and use alternate methods of activation, but I assure you XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX will not work J

For the other folders make sure that you change the values marked in bold

Now your folder looks like this

This is exactly the content needed to install this particular version of Office 2016, so it is perfect to be deployed as a deployment type for an application in SCCM 2012.

Installation using SCCM 2012

Okay let’s get down to some deployment business … fire up your SCCM 2012 Console

Start the Create Application Wizard

Select “Manually Specify the application information”

Enter the name, I used “Microsoft Office 2016”

Just click next …

Click Add… to create a deployment type

Select “Manually specify the deployment type information”

Enter a name for the deployment type, I like “Silent Install x64”, sounds a bit like ninjas and stuff

Specify the location of your source files

Enter the following as Installation program: setup.exe /configure “configuration x64.xml”

Click Add Clause to add a detection rule

Select Windows Installer and use {90160000-008C-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE} for the product code

Technically it is the product for the “Office 16 Click-to-Run Extensibility Component” but it does the trick.

All done for the detection method

Set whatever user experience you like, again I like stealthy ninja deployments.

We also should add a requirement for x64 OS, just in case.

Select the x64 operating systems you support.

All done here

And here

Let’s summarize a little

Almost done …

But not yet …

Okay if this was a Youtube video I would do some fast forward magic to save your time…

Now all that remains is to distribute and deploy …