Migrate to O365: how to programmatically remove older Click to Run based versions of Office ?

Question

Hi everyone,

My company is planning to migrate to Office 365. Currently they have a variety of scenarios within their environment (x86/x64 Office versions, Office 2013/2016/2019, Pro/Std). Most of the Office suites have been installed using Click to Run installer and some of them using MSI installer.

What I am looking for is a solution (tool, script, ...) to programmatically remove older Click to Run based Office versions, regardless of the version and architecture of the application

I found a solution for the scenarios where the Office version has been installed using MSI, by using RemoveMSI in the configuration xml file : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/upgrade-from-msi-version

I have made a lot of research for the other scenarios where Office versions have been installed using Click to Run installer. Microsoft recommends two ways to uninstall these versions: manually uninstall through Control Panel or using MSRO tool (SetupProd_OffScrub.exe). It works but it is not applicable to me because I have more than 2500 devices to migrate.

Below are my investigations:
- Using Remove-PreviousOfficeInstalls.ps1 from https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-ScriptsUnfortunately, Development has stopped.
- Using Command-line version of Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant : Not applicable as Full GUI Version is required to uninstall older Office versions (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/troubleshoot/administration/sara-command-line-version)"Multiple Office products found Exit the scenario 08: Multiple Office versions were found. Please use the full SaRA version."

• Tried to launch UninstallString value from Registry Key from Cmd Prompt (as Admin): "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun\OfficeClickToRun.exe" scenario=install scenariosubtype=ARP sourcetype=None productstoremove=Standard2019Volume.16_en-us_x-none culture=en-us version.16=16.0 but nothing happens.

Maybe I am missing something about how Click-to-Run works. Let me know if this is the case. One again, I am looking for support for migrating Office 2013/2016/2019 to Office 365.

Thanks in advance for your help

Answer 1

Hi @Burgisser Kevin ,
There is a Office support tool can help you uninstall all Office applications from PC completely, maybe you can run the tool first for each PC, then deploy Office 365 directly for all users.

About the support tool you can download from this link: https://aka.ms/SaRA-officeUninstallFromPC

You can try this method and check the result, any updates please let me know and I'm glad to help you.

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Answer 2

Thank you @Emi Zhang-MSFT for your answer.
As written in my post, I have already investigated that SaRA solution but it is inapplicable for our company. Imaging installing and executing SaRA software on more than 2500 devices manually; it would take weeks to finish the project. I cannot understand why Microsoft does not provide any script to uninstall Office, like every program vendors...

I think my biggest problem here is that I cannot find a way to uninstall (with a script/cmd line) any Office version installed by Click to Run installer.
I tried the use the command associated with the Uninstall value of the Office registry key (something like Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall) but when launching the command, nothing happens.
Also, in the installation directory of Office (in some like C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16), there is no uninstall program.

Does anyone have an idea on how to uninstall non-MSI based Office version other than using SaRA tool or manually uninstallation from Control Panel?

Any help on that would be fully appreciated, I am desperate.