Creating a Microsoft Office 365 Offline Installer

Update: This post is getting quite old now, and the process may well have changed. Please be sure to check the comments where some helpful people have posted updates, and please also share any tips you come across for future visitors too.

Recently I had to install Office 365 on a dozen machines at a location with 512mb Internet. After the nostalgia faded I wrestled through the directions to obtain an Offline installer. In the hope this will save somebody some head scratching, here are the directions.

This will install Office 365 Pro ready for you to activate it with your Office 365 Organisational Account. It’s been tested with an Office 365 Education A3 license.

1. Download the Office Deployment Tool

Download and run this tool, then give it a folder where you’d like it to extract the files we’re going to need. If you want both 32 and 64 bit versions of Office, you’re going to have to repeat this whole process again. I pointed this tool at a folder called office_installer_32 and then at office_installer_64

You should see a file called setup.exe and one called configuration.xml

Download Here:

• Office 2013: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778
• Office 2016: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117
  (Thanks to Hayden Holcroft for the update via the comments)

2. Edit the XML configuration file

This file tells the tool which versions of the software you’d like to download and install.

In the same directory where you extracted the installer tool, edit the file called “configuration.xml” and fill it with the following, change the OfficeClientEdition value to 32 for a 32 bit  version.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" >
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Updates Enabled="TRUE" />
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" />
</Configuration>

This will install Office 365 Pro, automatically activate it (though it’ll still ask for your Office account), not show you the EULA (because it’s quicker to get it installed that way) and enable updates. If you have a file server which you wish to use, consider using the SourcePath parameter under both <add> and <updates>. See the Configuration Reference for more details.

See the XML Configuration Reference for more details: http://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/jj219426.aspx

3. Do the Download

Now open a command prompt in the folder which contains setup.exe and run:

setup.exe /download configuration.xml

This will download all the files required to install that which is specified in the configuration.xml. All in all, it’s about 1.1GB (0.9GB for 32 bit). All the files get put into a folder called ‘Office’ unless you specified ‘sourcePath’.

4. Install It

You install Office running:

setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

in the same was as you downloaded it. To speed this up if you’re running on multiple machines, create a file called setup.bat and fill it with the command above. Now, double clicking this file will install Office. The setup should require no interaction until it’s done and ready to activate.

Optional Extras

If you’re doing this for somebody else, you may want to also visit Office.com in their web browser and Always Enable the addon.

When you first use the Office products you will need to activate it by logging in with your username and password.

A note on licences

After you activate your suite with your login, if you delete that user the software will tell you to login to check things are OK. I have not found how you can re-activate with a different login.

Some of the official pages I used

• http://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/gg998766.aspx
  • Talks about whether to get your users to install it themselves through their browser or do an offline install
• http://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/jj219423.aspx
  • For those who have decided they want to do an offline install