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Understanding Office update channels, Changing for 365 Home or 2019 Retail

Martin Fessler 11 Reputation points
2020-10-06T14:20:35.903+00:00

Hello everybody,

the many update channels and the resulting version fragmentation are a little bit confusing.
And yes I know, I'm throwing Microsoft 365 and Office 2019 products together, but basically it's all the same soup.

If I understand it correctly, the different update channels like "Beta, Current, Monthly Enterprise, Semi-Annual Enterprise...) are basically only for "Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise" and "Microsoft 365 Apps for business", whereby these work also with the other 365 Business and even for the Home Plans.
The "PerpetualVL2019" is the only channel for Office Professional Plus 2019 and Office Standard 2019.
Office Home & Business 2019, on the other hand, will be installed with the "Current Channel" (formerly "Monthly Channel").

Since Office Home & Business 2019 does not get any new features (at least that is the case most of the time... there are sometimes minor exceptions) it makes in my opinion no sense to choose the monthly channel and thus unnecessarily generate data volume and and kind of crazy changing (practically replacing) the Version every month.
A change to e.g. the Semi-Annual Enterprise channel works fine.

But, I assume that is also not officially supported (or maybe even prohibited license-wise?), like changing the channel for the 365 Business or Home plans - right?
Does anyone have practical experience with changing the update channels for Office 2019 Retail or 365 Single or Family?
As I said, in tests it worked perfectly, but what is in the long run?

Thanks for reading and every answer!
Greetings,
Martin

Office Management
Office Management
Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Erin Ding-MSFT 4,461 Reputation points
    2020-10-08T10:35:58.32+00:00

    @Martin Fessler

    Actually Current Channel is the default update channel of Office Home & Business 2019. I wouldn’t suggest you to change it.
    If you really want to change it, you may refer to the following.

    Here is the version of my Windows.
    30952-1.png

    The following is the configuration file of Office 2019 installed on my computer.
    <Configuration>
    <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Version="16.0.13001.20384">
    <Product ID="HomeStudent2019Retail">
    <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
    </Add>
    <RemoveMSI All="True"/>
    </Configuration>
    30880-2.png

    Type ‘run’ in the search bar, open it, type ‘regedit’, click ‘OK’.
    Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration, change the value of CDNBaseUrl and UpdateChannel to http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/7ffbc6bf-bc32-4f92-8982-f9dd17fd3114.
    30955-3.png

    Open an Office application, File>Account>Update Options>Update now.
    Then Office will update to Version 2002 (Build 12527.21104)
    30917-4.png

    Tips: If it shows ‘You’re up to date!’, please try to change the value of UpdateChannelChanged to True.
    30868-5.png

    According to Update history for Microsoft 365 Apps (listed by date), the updated Office is the newest version of Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel.
    30869-6.png

    Regards,
    Erin

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