Installing Only Particular Office 365 programs?

Niels:

No, you are not making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Actually you are expressing a fairly common request we have seen since the release of Office 2016.

Prior to 2016, if you had one of the "MSI" installs there was an option to do a "custom" install to select applications to install or omit.  Starting with Office 365/2013 MS made an "improvement" making Office 365 an "all or nothing" installation for consumers.  They claim that not installing specific apps "only" saves 200-500MB per application.

So, for the average home user there is no option to control applications installed by Office 365.  BUT, if you are willing to invest a little effort, there is a business specific tool you can use.  It is called the "Office Deployment Tool". You will have to edit a simple text only "XML" file that tells the tool what you want it to do.

Here are some links to instructions on how to use the tool

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/wiki/officeversion_other-office_install/office-365-for-business-links-to-various-guide/7191f557-e753-46b7-9815-2c798caff2da 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219428?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Can-I-install-individual-Office-applications-1eede13d-3426-40cc-b30b-9aa40226bb9e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNHyHnedY4E

http://www.askvg.com/tip-customize-microsoft-office-click-to-run-c2r-setup-to-install-selected-programs-only/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219426.aspx

<snip>

After much trial and error, I got it to work for me.

First I had to run the Office scrub vbs file (available from Fix It here: https://support.office.microsoft.com/en-us/article/Fix-Office-365-Office-2016-or-Office-2013-install-errors-54554bb8-aa94-43c7-a685-408dd9868c0b) to remove all traces of any Office installs on my computer (I’m running Win10x64 Pro & Ent).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbfIHR_52do

Reboot

1. I opened the ISO from MSDN and extracted that to D:\Archive\Office2016\ which created subdirectories off of that of \Office\data

-- Note that if you don’t have the iso yet, you can can ask setup to download the required files, just skip ahead to step 3 below---

2. rename D:\Archive\Office2016\setup.exe to whatever the heck you like.

3. I downloaded the Office 2016 Deployment Tool (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117) and extracted the zip to D:\Archive\Office2016\.  This will place setup.exe and configuration.xml into that directory (this is why we renamed setup.exe above).  I edited the XML file and put the following in it (deleting everything else that was in it):

<Configuration>

  <Add SourcePath=”D:\Archive\Office2016\” OfficeClientEdition=”64” >
  <Product ID=”proplusretail”>
  <Language ID=”en-us” />  
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Access” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Publisher” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Grove” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Lync” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”skypeforbusiness” />
  </Product>
  </Add>

  <Logging Name=”OfficeSetup.txt” Path=”%temp%” />

</Configuration>

NOTE: you can setup the deployment to include multiple languages ie:
<language ID= ‘en-us’ ‘es-es’  />

Using group policy, there are over 2100 settings you can control via the deployment tool

***NOTE that I wasn’t sure about the naming convention for Skype for Business/Lync so I put them both in the config file - I still don’t know which one is needed but the above config successfully did NOT install Skype for Business***

4. If you don’t have the ISO then run the following:
D:\Archive\Office2016\setup.exe /download configuration.xml

that will create the sub directories and download the files necessary for your desired configuration

5. Now, whether this is from the ISO or the downloaded files, run:
D:\Archive\Office2016\setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

bingo, bango, bongo, you’ve got a customized install.

</snip>

<snip>

I tried your method,  and when I launched the program from CMD, I immediately got error code 30088-1021 after it got elevated privileges. If instead of using cmd and the deployment toolkit’s setup file, I went into \office directory (one level down from where I was) and launched the setup64 program and it began installing correctly. I do have Office 2013 installed still.

This is the configuration.xml file I made;;

<Configuration>
<Configuration>

  <Add SourcePath=”E:\to keep\bittorrent\en_office_professional_plus_2016_x86_x64_dvd_6962141\office extracted” OfficeClientEdition=”64” >
  <Product ID=”proplusretail”>
  <Language ID=”en-us” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Access” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”onenote” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Grove” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Groove” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”Lync” />
  <ExcludeApp ID=”skypeforbusiness” />
  </Product>
  </Add>

  <Logging Name=”OfficeSetup.txt” Path=”%temp%” />

</Configuration>
</Configuration>

</snip>

http://blogs.office.com/2014/05/14/the-garage-series-for-office-365-updates-to-office-365-proplus-for-admins-and-first-look-at-upcoming-shared-computer-support/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219426.aspx Configuration.XML Reference

Depending on the software or services you have in place, many organizations want to disable certain components of the Office suite. The common ones I hear are Access and InfoPath, sometimes the Exchange team in a company controls the version of Outlook on the desktop, an in-place communications system might make it difficult to use Lync, etc. In the traditional Office MSI packages, you could use the Office Customization Tool or a configuration file to control which apps your users received and now using thenew Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run (download page) and May 2014 or newer builds of Office, you can do this now as well.

After downloading the Office Deployment Tool, you can edit the default configuration.xml file to exclude the apps you don’t want using the “ExcludeApp ID” control as shown below. The naming conventions tend to follow the executable names closely or are slightly abbreviated in the case of names like MSACCESS vs. Access

If you install an Office Click-to-Run build using the configuration.xml example above, it will install the entire suite minus Access, InfoPath and OneDrive for Business. You could use similar configuration files to install as few as one Office application as well. If you’re wondering if the Office Deployment Tool will work to install other Office products in addition to Office 365 ProPlus, yes it works for all Click-to-Run versions of Office. The MSI versions are only available for Volume License versions of Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office Standard 2013, every other Office 2013 version uses Click-to-Run.

Here are instruction for you to download the offline installer file

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/wiki/office_365hp-office_install/retrograde-upgrade-office-3652016-to-2013-download/fbdf55d9-9b62-4ac0-95af-56a9f848c2b2

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/How-do-I-use-the-Office-2016-offline-installer-f0a85fe7-118f-41cb-a791-d59cef96ad1c

If you need to install Office 2016 without an active Internet connection, or if you're having problems with slow speed or tenuous connections, you can download the offline installer file and then install Office 2016 at your convenience. Go to the Wiki link above for instructions with pictures

Start on the On the My Account page, choose Install.