Background

When you attempt to install Office 365 ProPlus from a local folder using the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) you get the following message:

More Information

This occurs when you have a relative path specified in the SourcePath the configuration.xml.  For example, your configuration.xml looks as follows:

<Configuration>
<Add SourcePath=".\Office2016" OfficeClientEdition="32" >
  <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add> 
</Configuration>

Workaround

To workaround this issue, you will need to specify an absolute path (UNC or Local folder) in the SourcePath attribute of the configuration.xml file.  For example, your configuration.xml looks as follows:

<Configuration>
<Add SourcePath="c:\Office2016" OfficeClientEdition="32" >
  <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add> 
</Configuration>

**UPDATE**

Our investigation determined that a certificate was recently deployed to replace an expiring certificate; however, we failed to initiate a process to whitelist the new certificate. We’ve whitelisted the certificate to restore service but users may still have a token within their client which is associated with the previous certificate. To resolve the issue, users can sign out and sign back in to one of their Office desktop applications. Alternatively, the token will expire after eight hours and a new one will be issued. If users wait for a new token, the latest that the token will expire, and that service will be restored, is 1:15 AM UTC on March 15, 2017.

We received multiple reports of an immerging issue:
“Sorry, there was a problem while trying to connect to your account with error code 0x15”

This appears to be affecting systems using Shared Computer Activation and Office 365 ProPlus with legacy authentication. Our Product Group team is currently conducting an investigation and identifying solutions for this issue. Office 2013 ProPlus is configured to use legacy authentication (IDCRL) by default and many of the customers reporting this issue are on this version. Please note the end of support for Office 365 ProPlus 2013 was on February 28, 2017. Therefore, we strongly recommend to upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus 2016.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3199744/support-for-the-2013-versions-of-office-365-proplus-ends-february-28,-2017

Enabling ADAL on Office 365 ProPlus systems has worked as a possible workaround while the product team determines the cause of this. For 2016 versions of ProPlus builds, ADAL is enabled by default.

The following documentation provides information about how to enable ADAL:

– How to enable the registry key for ADAL
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Enable-Modern-Authentication-for-Office-2013-on-Windows-devices-7dc1c01a-090f-4971-9677-f1b192d6c910?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
For Office 2016:  HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity\EnableADAL

– Verify that the ADAL .dlls files are the minimum required builds for this to work properly:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Using-Office-365-modern-authentication-with-Office-clients-776c0036-66fd-41cb-8928-5495c0f9168a?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1

Starting Office 2016 ProPlus, we have 3 production channels, namely Current, Deferred and First release for Deferred Channel. Each channel receives features updates, security and non-security updates on different intervals.

Consider a scenario the Office 2016 which is installed on the machine as Deferred Channel. Now let’s say, a new feature or fix is introduced on Current or First Release for Deferred which you would like to use. But being in Deferred channel you will have to end up waiting for a few months before this feature as an update for Deferred channel. But what if you don’t really want to wait that long. Well, in this scenario you also have an option to switch the channel of the Office from Deferred to some other channel.

Below are steps to switch Channels:

1. Identify the Channel in which fix is released. You should be able to find it here.
2. Launch Cmd prompt as administrator.
3. Navigate to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun>”
4. Run the following command to change the desired channel, let’s say Current
   “OfficeC2RClient.exe /changesetting Channel=Current”

You can use this command to switch to any other channel. Simply choose the corresponding Channel Keyword from below:

To start the switch Channel process, complete by executing “OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user” in cmd prompt path ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun>”

This should be followed by a series of windows which will take you through the process of downloading and installing updates for the new channel that you have switch to.

The other option for changing channel is using Office Deployment Tool (ODT). Here are the steps for it:

setup.exe /configure changechannel.xml 

<Configuration> 

    <Updates Channel=”Deferred” /> 

</Configuration> 

Note:

• For instance, if you prefer to switch to a build on a particular channel, the cmd would be:
          OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.xxxx.xxxx

• If you are downgrading Channels from faster channel to slower one, say from Current to Deferred, this may end up with larger than normal download of Office bits.

Reference:

Overview of Update Channels for Office 365 ProPlus

Reference on Office 2016 builds on production

Office ProPlus Client Update Channel release- features

More Information

New Channel changes are expected to effect from September 2017 as per the article. This would change the terminology used in this blog.

You may find that end users are receiving the following message when attempting to download/install Visio or Project from the O365 Portal.

Visio

Install Visio

Your admin has turned off Visio installs. Contact your admin for more information about how to get Visio in your organization.

If this is unexpected and users should have access to download Visio/Project, check the Software Download Settings from within the Admin Portal.

1. Open the Office 365 Admin Center Home page. (https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home#/homepage)

2. Under the 'Office Software' tile, select 'Software download settings'

3. You may find that Visio/Project are already set to be available for download, if so, toggle the setting to Off, then back On.

4. It may take some time for the change to be seen in the Portal download page.

For Enterprise Customers using Office 365 ProPlus, users will be migrated to the latest version in February of 2016. If you want your users to stay on Office 2013 and continue to receive 2013 security updates, you can delay their migration to Office 2016 ProPlus. Your users will continue to receive security updates for Office 2013 ProPlus until February 2017 through the same update method you are currently using. However after that time, no additional security updates will be made for Office 2013 ProPlus, so we strongly recommend that you migrate to the latest version before February of 2017.

There are three ways we can delay the migration to Office 2016 ProPlus, The first is to use a GPO setting that blocks the update or you can push out a registry key manually that will do the same. Those options are outlined in our KB here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3097292

Thirdly, we can use the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) and the configuration.xml file to prevent the migration as well.

In the configuration.xml file we will add the AutoUpgrade attribute and set it to "FALSE" like in this example configuration.xml file here:

<Configuration> 
<Updates Enabled="TRUE" AutoUpgrade="FALSE" />
</Configuration>

The Office Deployment tool was updated in December of 2015 to accommodate this new switch. If you are using the old version of the tool you can download the newest one here.

Additional Links:

Prepare to update Office 365 ProPlus to the Office 2016 version

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt422981.aspx

Starting on Version 1708 the ‘Update Now’ from the Office 365 Application backstage is no longer visible if the Office installation is also configured to receive updates through SCCM.

This change was implemented so that Users cannot bypass administrative configuration settings around updating Office.

Prior to Version 1708:

At Version 1708 and greater you will see a message that Updates are managed by your admin:

The ‘Update Now’ option is also hidden:

If a user requires individually updating the Office Client outside of SCCM, they can still do this through command line with elevated privileges.

To manually trigger an Office update, run “OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user” from the cmd prompt path ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun>”

To specify a specific version run “OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.xxxx.xxxx”

For more information around configuring updates, please see Configure Update Settings for Office 365 ProPlus.

There are times during troubleshooting an Office issue when the traditional log settings are not gathering enough information. This could be for Sign-In issues, installation and patching issue, even App issues.

To gather more verbose logging details, set the following registry key.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Logging]
"EnableLogging"=dword:00000001

Reproduce the issue and gather the logs for review. The logs will be stored under %temp%. Note the time stamp you did the repro so you gather the correct logs.

Turn off the Office ULS verbose logging setting after you gather the logs, otherwise this will continue to gather verbose data and take up more dive space.

Reg keys to automate logging enabled/disabled: Enable-Local-Logging2016 Disable-Local-Logging2016

Issue: When customers install Office Professional Plus 2013 MSI or Lync 2013 MSI standalone and use the Office Customization Tool (OCT) to change the default Start Menu Shortcut path, after installing the April 2015 update for Office which transforms Lync 2013 to Skype for Business 2013, the shortcut for Skype for Business will remain as “Lync 2013” which can be confusing for end users.

We can work around this by using a PowerShell script like the following sample to change the Lync shortcut icons to Skype for Business icons. *Note – this script is an example script and should be tested before being used in production.

============================================
$shortcutLocation = "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Office 2013\"
$oldShortcut = "Lync 2013.lnk"
$newShortcut = "Skype for Business 2015.lnk"
$iconComment = "Connect with people everywhere through voice and video calls, Skype Meetings, and IM."

# Rename shortcut:
Rename-Item $shortcutLocation$oldShortcut $newShortcut

# Change the new shortcut settings
$shell = New-Object -COM WScript.Shell
$shortcut = $shell.CreateShortcut($shortcutLocation+$newShortcut)
$shortcut.Description = $iconcomment
$shortcut.Save()

#Get the Icon Name and Folder
$iconlocation = $shortcut.IconLocation
$tempInd = $iconlocation.indexof("Icon")

$iconName = $iconlocation.substring($tempInd,$iconlocation.indexof(".exe")-$tempInd )
$iconFolder = $iconlocation.substring(0,$tempInd)

#Change the icon:
Rename-Item $iconFolder$iconName".exe" $iconFolder$iconName"_old.exe"
Copy-Item $iconFolder"lyncicon.exe" $iconFolder$iconName".exe" -force

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