Office 365 - Update Procedure

[Nick Panaccio]

I'm finding conflicting information on the procedure for updating Office 365. In CTX224566, it states that you need to change <Updates Enabled="FALSE" /> to <Updates Enabled="TRUE" /> in the configuration XML file before updating 365 using the /configure switch. However, before reading the article, I left that setting at 'FALSE' and O365 appeared to update just fine. Is the information in that article still accurate?

 

Furthermore, if we're upgrading Office 365 in a Layer version, do I need to do anything else, like re-run Office2013Windows81_PREP.cmd before Finalizing the layer?

[Joe Robinson]

I'll preface this with "I don't use applayering", so you can adjust this to your environment.

 

<Updates Enabled="True" /> will allow the Office Client to check for updates.  False will tell it to never check.    Confirmation of this is available here:\

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/configuration-options-for-the-office-2016-deployment-tool

 

The description for Updates Enabled = True is Office will check for updates.

 

 

If you've updated your setup bits, then this setting won't really matter unless the "configure" xml specifies a different version.  The article assumes you're using the same xml file to download the and install the software.

 

I have multiple .xml files for office, depending on what I'm doing.  If I'm downloading, I use an XML that just gets the latest latest version.  I run this from a completely separate "admin" machine that doesn't have office.  If I'm going to install it to a VDA, then I use an install.xml file that matches the settings I want, and will most likely have updates set to false.

 

You can also review the online XML generator -- the descriptions are a bit better : https://config.office.com/deploymentsettings  

 

On this tool, you can see that it's referred to as "Automatically Check for Updates" ....