How to install Office using a Provisioning Package

  • Article

Hi everyone,

Sorry, it took me quite a while to write that article about how to install Office using a Provisioning Package (PPKG).

As you might know, there's some challenges deploying  a Win32 apps using PPKG because of the limitation of the file you can upload inside a PPKG to use with "ProvisioningCommands" feature. Indeed, it's not currently possible to have a folder structure within the "CommandFiles" field; only files, not folders. This makes importing Office sources a big challenge since Office has a quite deep folder structure.

Fortunately there's a workaround for that!

Let me show you how to install Office using PPKG and in the below explanation, i will use the Click-to-Run version of Office 2016 but it would work the same for Office 2016 Professional Plus (you might have to modify the PowerShell script to reflect the correct installation command line).

Creating the ZIP file containing Office source

The first thing you need to do is downloading the source of Office 2016 Click-to-Run and to do that, you need a free tool called "Office 2016 Deployment Tool" that you can download here.

  • Create a folder named "C:\O365" on the computer where you installed Windows ICD
  • Extract the Office Deployment Tool inside "C:\O365" folder.
  • Edit the "Configuration.xml" file using Notepad. I put an example below.
 <Configuration>
  <Add SourcePath="" OfficeClientEdition="32" Branch="Current">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <!--  <Updates Enabled="TRUE" Branch="Current" /> -->
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
  <Logging Level="Standard" Path="C:\Windows\Debug" />
  <!--  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" />  -->
</Configuration>

  • Open a Command Prompt and run the following command to download Office source.

     C:\O365\setup.exe /download configuration.xml
    • That will download Office source inside "C:\O365" folder

  • ZIP the "C:\O365" folder into a file called "O365.zip"

Create the PowerShell script to install silently Office

  • Copy the sample code below and save it into a file called "Start-ProvisioningCommands.ps1"
 <#
.Synopsis
 Office 2016 installation sample script
.DESCRIPTION
 Extract the ZIP and run the Office setup.exe with the configuration file as a parameter
#>
[CmdletBinding()]
[Alias()]
[OutputType([int])]

Param
(
 [Parameter(Mandatory=$false,
 ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
 Position=0)]
 $Log = "$env:windir\debug\Start-ProvisioningCommands.log"
)

Begin
{
 <#
 # Start logging
 #>
 Start-Transcript -Path $Log -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

<#
 # Extract the ZIP
 #> 
 $Archives = Get-ChildItem -Path $PSScriptRoot -Filter *.zip | Select-Object -Property FullName
 ForEach-Object -InputObject $Archives -Process { Expand-Archive -Path $_.FullName -DestinationPath "$env:TEMP" -Force }
}

Process
{
 <#
 # Office 2016 installation
 #> 
 $WorkingDirectory = "$env:TEMP\O365"
 $Configuration = Get-ChildItem -Path $WorkingDirectory -Filter *.xml | Select-Object -Property FullName
 [XML]$XML = Get-Content -Path $Configuration.FullName
 $XML.Configuration.Add.SourcePath = $WorkingDirectory
 $XML.Save($Configuration.FullName)

 # Run Office 2016 setup.exe
 Start-Process -FilePath "$WorkingDirectory\Setup.exe" -ArgumentList ('/Configure "{0}"' -f $Configuration.FullName) -WorkingDirectory $WorkingDirectory -Wait -WindowStyle Hidden

 # If you want to remove the extracted Office source, uncomment below
 # Remove-Item -Path $WorkingDirectory -Force
}
End
{
 <#
 # Stop logging
 #> 
 Stop-Transcript -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

Create the Provisioning Package using Windows ICD

  • Open Windows ICD and navigate to [Runtime Settings]>[ProvisioningCommands]>[DeviceContext]

    • Under [CommandFiles] add "O365.zip" and "Start-ProvisioningCommands.ps1" files

    • Under [CommandLine], type the following command which will install silently Office:

       PowerShell.exe –ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted .\Start-ProvisioningCommands.ps1

You should get something which look like this:

WICDPPKG1

Create the PPKG and voila :)

PS: I want to thank my coworker Ryan Hall working as a Senior PFE in Australia who explained me that method to deploy Office using PPKG.