When you have low bandwidth sites, but still wish to use the Office 365 version (Click to Run) of Office 2013, you don’t want your users to individually download the whole package over a 768k line.
The best method is using System Center Configuration Manager or another form of local distribution like branch caching on a local machine in the remote location. But sometimes those are not available, you’ll have to resort to good old DVD’s.
The CTR installer requires a full path for the configuration file, here’s how I fixed an installation DVD for that.
1. download the Office 2013 Click to Run Customization Tool: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778
2. Extract it to a local folder, let’s say c:\temp
3. Open a text editor and edit the configuration file to your preferences, mine looked like this for an x86 English install:
<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition=”32″>
<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail” >
<Language ID=”en-us” />
</Product>
</Add>
</Configuration>
4. Open a cmd window and type c:\temp\setup.exe /download c:\temp\configuration.xml
5. wait for the process to complete, you should see an Office folder appear
6. Create a root folder for your ISO image, for example, c:\dvdroot
7. Create a subfolder, src: c:\dvdroot\src
8. Move the Office folder, setup.exe and configuration.xml to the SRC folder
9. Edit the configuration.xml in the src folder, mine looked like this:
<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition=”32″ >
<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail”>
<Language ID=”en-us” />
</Product>
</Add>
<Updates Enabled=”FALSE”/>
<Display Level=”Full” AcceptEULA=”TRUE” />
<Logging Path=”%temp%” />
<Property Name=”AUTOACTIVATE” Value=”1″ />
</Configuration>
10. Now create an Install.bat file in the dvdroot folder (c:\dvdroot\Install.bat)
11. Paste this in the Install.bat file:
%~dp0src\setup.exe /configure %~dp0src\install.xml
The %~dp0 points to the folder Install.bat is in, src\setup.exe calls setup.exe in the SRC folder.
12. Burn the ISO to a DVD.
Because setup.exe needs a full path to the configuration file, not using this method would cause the installation to fail if I’d choose say d: (dvd drive), and one of the remote locations was using e: or another driveletter.