It has long been claimed that Office 365 ProPlus can only be installed as one single package, and that Click-to-Run is not customizable at the application level. Microsoft lists the following athttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj839718.aspx“Office 365 ProPlus installs as one package. This means you can't choose to deploy Word and PowerPoint to users, but not Access. If you don’t want users to run Access, you can customize the installation by using App-V. You can also use AppLocker to prevent users from starting certain Office applications.”
Can anyone then explain the purpose of the additional product ID’s specified in the following kb article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2842297
Using the product ID’s listed here, I set the Configuration.xml file to selectively install only four Office products, which included Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Word. In this example, I removed the Product ID O365ProPlusRetail and instead just included the Product ID’s for the individual applications we wanted to install.
<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition="32">
<Product ID="AccessRetail" >
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
<Product ID="ExcelRetail" >
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
<Product ID="PowerPointRetail" >
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
<Product ID="WordRetail" >
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
</Add>
<Updates Enabled="TRUE" />
<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
<Logging Name="OfficeSetup.txt" Path="%temp%" />
</Configuration>
Given what I had read throughout multiple areas of documentation, especially the line that mentions, “Click-to-Run is not customizable at the application level,” I was surprised and excited to see that the click to run installer only installed the applications that I specified.
Using the Configuration.xml file I specified above, I was able to complete a custom install of Office 365 ProPlus, and included only programs that I wanted to have installed.
The issue comes when you go to license the software. I can launch any of the individual programs without issue, but I am unable to complete the process of activating the license.
For example, see below where I have launched Word, entered my account information and attempted to activate. Everything has worked fine up to this point, but I am told that I cannot activate because the product is not installed. It seems that my custom install has prevented needed information from being added to my system to allow for the activation wizard to detect the presence of the installed Office software and to activate appropriately.
Can anyone from Microsoft comment on this? Is there any way possible to proceed given my configurations? If not, what is the purpose ofhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/2842297 ?
In what case would you actually be able to use the additional product IDs? (AccessRetail, ExcelRetail, WordRetail, etc.)