NOTE: This tutorial will work for Office 2013 and later versions such as Office 2016 and Office 2019.
Since the release of Office 2010 version, Microsoft has started using a new virtualization technology to distribute Office setup and installation files to users and the technology is called “Click-to-Run” or “C2R Installer“.
In older Office versions such as Office 2003, 2007, etc, Microsoft used to provide traditional MSI (Windows Installer) to Office users to install Office suite in their computers. The MSI installer allowed users to select or deselect desired Office programs at the time of installation so that the Office setup wizard installs only selected programs.
On the other hand, the new C2R installer is an absolute different type of program which actually streams Office setup files from Microsoft servers. Its an online installer which downloads Office files at the time of installation. The benefit of this installer is that it lets you use the downloaded Office programs before the whole Office suite is installed in your computer. Also with the help of C2R installer, you can install multiple Office versions side-by-side in same computer.
But there is a big disadvantage in this new Click-to-Run installer technology! This new C2R installer doesn’t allow you to select/deselect Office programs at the time of installation so the installer downloads and installs all available Office programs. If you want to install only selected programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you can’t do that with C2R installer. It’ll install all Office programs without asking for your choice.
Fortunately Microsoft provides an official tool to customize Click-to-Run installer options so that you can force the installer to install your desired Office programs only.
This tool is called “Office Deployment Tool” and is available for Office 2013, Office 2016 and Office 2019 versions. With the help of this tool, you can download Office setup files at your desired location and then configure the installer to install your selected Office apps only. You can also select which language should be installed and also customize lots of setup options.
You can consider this deployment tool as an unattended setup of Microsoft Office suite. You can force the Click-to-Run installer to suppress the whole setup UI. Also you can set whether Office should automatically update itself or not.
If you want to customize Office setup and want to install selected Office programs using Click-to-Run (C2R) installer in your computer, check out following simple steps:
STEP 1: Download Office Deployment Tool
First of all, download the official tool from Microsoft website:
Download Office 2013 Deployment Tool
Download Office 2016 and Office 2019 Deployment Tool
STEP 2: Run Deployment Tool to Extract Required Files
Once you download Office Deployment Tool, run it and it’ll ask you to select a folder to extract the files. Select any desired folder and it’ll extract following 2 files in that folder:
- configuration.xml
- setup.exe
STEP 3: Edit Configuration.XML File
“Configuration.xml” file is the main file which will be used to tell the Office installer details about all setup options. We’ll provide all required information in this XML file to force the installer to install only selected Office programs with predefined things. You can consider this XML file as an automatic answer file which is used in unattended software installations.
We’ll use Notepad to edit this XML file. To edit the file, right-click on “configuration.xml” file and select Edit option. It’ll automatically open the file in Notepad.
By default, the file contains basic information to help you in easily modifying the file. Everything is marked as comment and you’ll need to remove the comment marks to make it a working configuration file.
Copy following code and replace the existing code in the file with it:
<Configuration>
<Add SourcePath=”E:\Office\” OfficeClientEdition=”64” >
<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail“>
<Language ID=”en-us” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Access” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Groove” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”InfoPath” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Lync” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”OneNote” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”PowerPoint” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”Publisher” />
<ExcludeApp ID=”SharePointDesigner” />
</Product>
</Add>
</Configuration>
Now some important things to know!
The information given in BOLD in the above code can be modified according to your requirements. For example:
SourcePath:
Set the value of “SourcePath” to the desired folder which should store the Office setup files downloaded by C2R installer.
OfficeClientEdition:
If you want to download and install 32-bit (x86) version of Office suite, set value of “OfficeClientEdition” to 32. If you want to download and install 64-bit (x64) version of Office suite, set its value to 64.
Product ID:
This variable contains the information about the main product which you want to install using C2R installer. You can set any of following as its value according to your requirements:
ProPlusRetail
ProfessionalRetail
HomeStudentRetail
HomeBusinessRetail
O365ProPlusRetail
O365HomePremRetail
O365BusinessRetail
O365SmallBusPremRetail
VisioProRetail
ProjectProRetail
SPDRetail
Language ID:
You can set which language should be installed by the installer. You can set its value to your desired locale and language information such as en-us, hi-in, ja-jp, etc.
ExcludeApp ID:
That’s the most useful variable which we need to specify to force C2R installer to install only selected Office programs.
This variable is optional. You can use this variable multiple times as we have used in the above code, to specify which Office programs should NOT be installed by the installer. So set its value to the programs which you don’t want to install i.e. exclude from your computer.
You can set its value to any of following:
Access
Excel
Groove
InfoPath
Lync
OneNote
Outlook
PowerPoint
Project
Publisher
SharePointDesigner
Visio
Word
That’s it. After providing required information save the XML file.
STEP 4: Download Office Setup Files
Now we need to download Office setup files using the setup.exe file. But it’ll not work if you try to direct run the setup.exe file.
1. Open the folder containing setup.exe and configuration.xml files. Now press and hold SHIFT key on your keyboard and then right-click on empty area in the folder. You’ll see a new option “Open command window here” or similar, click on it. It’ll open Command Prompt window with the current directory active.
2. Now type following command in Command Prompt and press Enter:
setup.exe /download configuration.xml
If you have set the “configuration.xml” file correctly, the setup.exe file will immediately start downloading Office files. You’ll notice a new folder “Office” created by the installer in the same folder which you defined in “SourcePath” variable in configuration.xml file. If you open this new folder, it’ll contain Office setup files which are being downloaded by the setup.exe file.
Downloading all Office files may take some time depending upon your Internet connection speed.
Once the download process finishes, the Command Prompt window will return to current directory.
STEP 5: Run Office Installer to Install Selected Programs
Now the final step! We need to run the setup.exe file with correct parameters in Command Prompt to install selected Office programs with our predefined settings in configuration.xml files.
Run following command in Command Prompt:
setup.exe /configure configuration.xml
That’s it. It’ll immediately start installing your desired Office programs in your computer.
It’ll take some time in installing Office suite in your computer.
BONUS TIP:
You can also provide the product key to the installer using configuration.xml file so that you don’t need to type product key manually. Just add following line to the code:
<Product PIDKEY=”11111-11111-11111-11111-11111“>
Replace “11111-11111-11111-11111-11111” with the correct product key.