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MDMarra
Asked: 2014-07-15 07:31:24 +0800 CST

Uninstall legacy versions of Office when deploying Office 365 Pro Plus

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In volume licensed editions of Office (ones with an MSI deployment), you can use OCT to create a package that will remove previous versions of Office when the new version is deployed.

Office 365 Pro Plus is Click-to-Run only, which means that OCT will not work with it. ODT allows for some customization of Office 365 Pro Plus, but appears to lack the ability to remove previous versions of Office.

Is there a way to do this native to the Office 365 Pro Plus deployment, or does this really involve creating a script to check for every possible version of Office along with uninstall logic?

microsoft-office-365

2 Answers

  1. Have you tried using wmic? You could use wildcard operators, and tune them to catch whatever programs you'd like to remove.

    For instance, try

    wmic product where "name like '%Office%'"

    You should catch most of what you're looking to remove. You could tune it further to search specifically for the versions or components of Office you know the machines have installed, but it would be likely fine (after checking a couple cases) to have the 'Office' wildcard blast through; definitely doublecheck though!

    So just script up something like this:

    wmic product where "name like '%Microsoft Office%'" call uninstall /nointeractive

    After you know you have your where clause tuned to catch just what you want. To avoid any issues, you can make it as specific of a query as you want.

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  2. MDMarra,

    When we were deploying O365 both the partners and MS said "you don't have to uninstall previous versions, they can stay on the computers". To which I said "why leave them on there?" and they didn't have a great answer for me other than "you can uninstall them if you'd like".

    So...that said...

    The below wasn't around when I was deploying...it would've likely been overkill for my needs and we had multiple users that still needed Office 2010 around in conjunction with Office Pro Plus 2013 for a while...but I had bookmarked this last month for another potential client.

    That said, here's what I had found.

    In conjunction with the PowerShell App Deployment Kit found here:

    http://psappdeploytoolkit.com/

    Christian Fosund has a script on his site he's using for a very large deployment:

    http://fosund.com/?p=494

    This is the script I have been using to deploy Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus to nearly 5000 clients. Its based on the awsome toolkit PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit by Sean Lillis It will uninstall all previous versions of Office and also remove additional applications like Live Meeting, Communicator 2007, Conferensing Add-in etc -- Christian Foslund

    It's not a "download and run it" script. You'll need the PADT and you'll need to change the script code for your particular environment needs, but it appeared to be worthy of a bookmark, and maybe it will help you as well.

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