Please be aware that with this post we will suspend the availability for this blog.

All the existing content will remain in place, while any new posts will appear under specific, application related Blogs.

Useful links:

Happy Blogging!

The intention of this post is to focus on the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) as part of the troubleshooting process.
In case you have trouble installing the click-to-run (C2R) version of Office, the ODT may come in handy and help to get your new Office installed.
The key concept is that the ODT allows to separate the file download from the installation process which helps to exclude network related issues from the picture.

If your computer is already in a troubled state from a previous failed attempt and you want to first try the default setup option, consider to follow the troubleshooting steps below:

• Run the fix-it to remove reminiscences of previous failed installations:

            https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501/en-us : Uninstall Microsoft Office 2013 or Office 365

• Check task scheduler and make sure there are no Office entries left here (if there are any you should delete them)  :

• Start the machine in clean boot:

            https://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135: How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows 8, Windows 7, or Windows Vista

• Disable firewall and antivirus; consider disabling proxy settings.

Here is a complete article of basic troubleshooting steps for installation issues: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2822317/en-us : General troubleshooting for installing Office 2013 and Office 365  

If you still encounter installation issues after testing the above steps, an essential step is the Office Deployment Tool.
We’ll show you the step by step instructions for the ODT in a bit but some administrative notes first.

    * NOTE: The general usage of the ODT is shown as well in this blog post: https://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2013/06/19/using-the-office-deployment-tool.aspx

   * More information on the Office Deployment Tool is available here:

=> https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219422.aspx : Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run

=> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778: Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run (download link)

=> https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2842297/en-us: Product IDs that are supported by the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run

That being said, here is a hands on example of the steps to install Office click to run via the Office Deployment Tool.
Please follow the outlined order.

1.  Download the Office Deployment Tool from the above link.

        - The resulting file will be an executable archive:

       - Once you extract it (by simply double clicking on it), it will contain 1 setup and 1 configuration file.

2.  You then need to modify the configuration file “configuration.xml”.

       - Open the file in Notepad

       - Here is how the default looks like and the pieces that need or can be amended:

 -> The comment markers <!-- and --> (highlighted in Red) need to be removed.

-> The value for SourcePath need to be replaced by a valid path on your machine.

       Note: This is the target path for the downloaded files.

      The simplest way would be to use the same path where you have placed the Office Deployment Tool.

      For example in my case, I saved the Office Deployment Tool in C:/ODT, therefore I will replace \\Server\Share\Office\ with C:\ODT\.

 The above are the ‘must do’ edits.

Now, the optional elements are:

-> Bitness of Office: by default it is 32, you may switch it to 64 if you wish. Note: The recommended default is 32 bit.

-> Product ID:

       - you should enter the product you need to install or for which you have a bought a license

       - you can find a list with available products here:

                  https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2842297/en-us : Product IDs that are supported by the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run

-> Language:

      - by default we have English, in case you want another language, please replace accordingly

      - a list of language codes is available here:

                https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533052(VS.85).aspx : Language Codes

 -> Additional products:

      - By default the configuration file references Office 365 Professional Plus Retail and Visio Professional Retail

      - You may remove the Visio set if you only wish to download one package, and replace the Office 365 Professional Plus with the needed product (if it is another product)

-> In case you need to configure other aspects of the installation you may also remove the <!--  and --> for the other settings.

     - A recommendation in this respect, in order to ensure that product updates are downloaded and installed automatically is to edit also the part highlighted in blue above

• The comment markers <!--  and --> (highlighted in Blue) need to be removed
• The path \\Server\Share\Office\ should be replaced with the path from which Office is actually downloaded, as you will see in what follows: https://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/39168D7E-077B-48E7-872C-B232C3E72675

To summarize, here is how a basic configuration should look like:

A full description of available customizations in the configuration.xml is available here.

 After modifying and saving the configuration.xml, we need to run a couple of commands in a CMD (Run as Administrator):

3.  The first is for downloading the setup files on the local machine.

         - The syntax looks like this:

         C:\PATH to setup>setup.exe /download "Path to configuration file\configuration.xml"

      Therefore, using the cd command you need to move into the folder where you have stored the deployment tool, then input the above command.

       In my case, I stored the setup and the configuration file in C:/ODT as seen above.

      Therefore the command will look like this:

      If all is well with the connection to the Office CDN servers, it should start downloading:

     And you will have a confirmation at the end that the packages have been downloaded successfully.

     If you then check in the folder where you have stored the setup.exe and the configuration file, you will see that a new folder has been created, containing the necessary components for the installation.

     The new folder structure won’t contain a setup executable file to run. The installation has to be performed through the deployment tool as well, with a very similar command as the one for download.

4.  In order to install, we need to simply replace the parameter of the above command, from /download to /configure:

       - The syntax will look like this:

        C:\<PATH to setup>setup.exe /configure "<Path to configuration file>\configuration.xml"

      - In my example, this is how it will look like:

     - After running this command, the installation dialog should come up and Office will start installing:

       (in my case I was installing an Italian version hence the progress bar is in Italian)

  
      - When the installation completed, you will also have the confirmation in the command prompt:

5.  On the Office interface, you will then be prompted to activate the product either with a live account (1) or with a product key (2).

Enjoy your new Office!

When trying to open an Office document from a SharePoint site, you get one of the following behaviors:

The file is being downloaded instead of opening directly from SharePoint:

      Do you want to open file.xlsx From SharePoint?

OR

Error message " 'Edit Document' requires a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible application.”

OR

Error message "The document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible application could not be found to edit the document."

OR

Error message “To open this workbook, your computer must be running a supported version of Microsoft Office_application and a browser that supports opening files directly from the Office Web Apps”

The issue occurs on computers on which you have installed more than one version of Office.

e.g. Visio 2007 and Office 2013, Office 2010 and Lync 2013

Cause

The issue can occur when you have several different versions of Office installed on the same computer and you have several different versions of the OWSSUPP DLL available which are not registered correctly. The OWSSUPP.DLL corresponds to the SharePoint OpenDocuments Class Add-On for Internet Explorer and is the integration Add-On for opening Office documents from SharePoint.

To check the version of the SharePoint OpenDocuments Class Add-On (OWSSUPP.DLL) open Internet Explorer when the error is showing and go to Tools > Manage Add-ons. In Manage Add-ons click on SharePoint OpenDocuments Class and notice the version:

12.0.. stands for Office 2007

14.0.. stands for Office 2010

15.0.. stands for Office 2013

Tip: if you don’t see the SharePoint OpenDocuments Class Add-On in the Add-Ons list in Internet Explorer, select the option to Show: Run without permission

Resolution

The OWSSUPP.DLL is installed as part of the “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support” category under Office Tools.

To resolve this issue you should disable Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support in any other version of Office installed on the machine and then repair Office.

e.g. if on a computer with Office 2010 and Lync 2013 you installed “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support” for both versions (Lync 2013 is part of the Office 2013 suite), you should disable “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support” for Lync 2013 and then repair Office 2010 so that the OWSSUPP.DLL gets registered.

To uninstall “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support” for all non-Office 2010 components:

Windows XP Solution:

• Go to Control Panel, Add Remove Programs
• For each Office program that is not an Office 2010 program, select the item and click Change, Choose Add or Remove Features, Click Continue.
• In Installation Options, expand Office Tools, Click Windows SharePoint Service Support OR Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support, Choose Not Available, Click Continue. You must do this for all Office programs that are not Office 2010 including earlier versions of Office Project or Visio.
• Once configuration is complete, In Add Remove Programs, click Office 2010, click Change, Choose Repair, Click Continue. (Note: A reboot will be required after the Repair completes)

Windows Vista/Windows 7 Solution:

• Go to Control Panel, Programs, Uninstall a Program.
• For each Office program that is not an Office 2010 program, select the item and click Change, Choose Add or Remove Features, Click Continue.
• In Installation Options, expand Office Tools, Click Windows SharePoint Service Support OR Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Support, Choose Not Available, Click Continue. You must do this for all Office family programs that are not Office 2010 including earlier versions of Office Project or Visio.

Once configuration is complete, in Programs, click Office 2010, click Change, Choose Repair, Click Continue. (Note: A reboot will be required after the Repair completes)

You can download them from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18968 - Office 2010 Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool download

• Please download the version (32-bit or 64-bit) according  to Office client architecture (32bit or 64bit).

Please install the Administrative Templates and extract them to a folder as advised in the wizard.

The Group Policy Editor will open and you should see the following:

According to https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179081(office.14).aspx, please follow the steps to add the ADM Templates:

After all ADM templates for Office 2010 are added please expand them, like this:

You will need Microsoft Office 2010 menu and Microsoft OneNote 2010.

Under Microsoft Office 2010 you will find the needed option: ‘Turn off screen clipping’

Please enable the policy.

Under Microsoft OneNote 2010 you will find the needed option: ‘Turns off all of the OneNote screen clipping notifications.’ and ‘Disables the screen clipping feature in OneNote.’

Please enable them.

As you may have noticed, I provided you with the information needed to disable the option for all Office Applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.

For OneNote the disabling of this option is treated, as you see, separately.

If you want to only disable the option in Word 2010 please proceed like this:

Download Office 2010 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers from https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=6627

You will get to have 33 Excel files containing IDs for UI controls in Office. Please open the Excel file called ‘WordControls.xlsx’ and search for screen clipping

Scroll to the right and you will find ID: 18674

In the Group Policy Editor Please navigate to Microsoft Word and add the value as follows:

Hope it’s useful!

Please feel free to add any comments and additional information, or ask any question if needed.

Before you start the deployment, you need to answer to a few questions:

• Does Office already have a Language Pack applied? Unlike in the case of language packs deployment, the Proofing Tools Kit does not have the ability to match shell UI, not being able therefore to adapt to he language of the OS.
• Do you plan to install all languages in the Proofing Tools Kit? If not, then the config.xml you use should contain just the languages you want to install. If you want each branch office to receive just the language that it needs, then you need to create a config.xml adequate to each branch office; for example, if you have 5 branch offices in 5 different countries, you need to create 5 different config.xml files. This also implies that you will use 5 different commands for installation. This may be time consuming, but the advantage is that size on disk will be smaller, even though the whole Proofing Tools Kit will always be cached locally.

After you’ve clarified the above aspects, you can start configuring your config.xml. You can use the default config.xml from in the installation package; it should be stored in the folder ProofKit.WW. Just to get an idea of how the main syntax looks like, a good starting point would be the following sample:

<Configuration Product="Proofkit">

<OptionState Id="ProofingTools_1027" State="Absent" Children="force"/> -> this is for the languages you do not want to install

<OptionState Id="ProofingTools_1069" State="Local" Children="force"/> -> this is for the languages you want to install from the Proofing Tools Kit

</Configuration>

Depending on the language you are interested in rolling out, set the corresponding language ID to state "Absent" | "Advertise"| "Local". Absent will not install that language, Advertise will install it on first run, and Local will install it whenever you run setup.exe together the config.xml.

The following article may come in handy if you want to know what language ID you should use for each language - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179219(v=office.14).

After your config.xml is customized, deploy it using the following command:

setup.exe /config <path to config.xml>\PTKconfig.xml

Speaking of Good-to-know things, you should also be aware that when you install the Microsoft Office Proofing Tools Kit on a computer that has Input Method Editor 2010 installed, and then you log on to the computer for the first time, the keyboard layout is configured for an Asian language unexpectedly. The good news however is that this issue was addressed in the following hotfix - https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2598278.

Getting to the Don’ts part, there are a few concerns around the deployment of the Proofing Tools Kit which sometimes lead to un-recommended workarounds. One of the major issues encountered in this scenario is that the Proofing Tools Kit always caches locally and that can be an inconvenient for the organizations which want to avoid high network load. There is however no way of preventing the Proofing Tools Kit
from caching, and then the following question comes up – “Is it supported to extract single .msi packages out of the Proofing Tools Kit and deploy them individually?” Answer is unfortunately negative – it is not recommended nor supported to extract just the .msi files of the languages we are interested in.

But when network traffic is a concern, there is another supported workaround which we can consider. The best option in this scenario is to use Language Packs instead of the Proofing Tools Kit Compilation. This
reason for this is that you can deploy each language pack separately to each subsidiary, without being forced to cache locally all the 37 languages ofOffice. Also, the language pack is smaller in size than the Proofing Tools Kit.

As a bonus, each Language Pack contains 2 or more additional companion languages. You can find useful information about the 37 language packs available for Office 2010 (and their companion languages) here:

Office 2010 - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee942198(v=office.14).aspx

Office 2013 - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee942198(v=office.15).aspx

There may of course be other more common issues, but they would not be Nordic specific like these are:


Various issues in Swedish Office 2003 that appear directly after Service Pack 3 is installed:
Please read about this update, it may contain the solution: Critical update for Office 2003


Danish "Ctrl" shortcuts don't work in Excel 2007:
Microsoft has released a hotfix to solve this problem. This hotfix is included in Service Pack 2. Since Service Pack 2 is no longer supported, please install Service Pack 3 from these links to solve it:
Office 2007 Danish Language Pack Service Pack 3
and
Office 2007 Danish Service Pack 3


Scandinavian function names are changed in Excel 2010:
Danish, Norwegian and Swedish users, in addition to 7 other languages, may find that function names have changed in Excel 2010. This is a known behavior, documented here. As seen there, installing SP1 for Excel 2010 will revert back to the old names. However, you may find that you have parts of SP1 already, but still have the new function names. In this case, you are probably missing one of the following updates:
Danish Language Pack Service Pack 1 or Danish Service Pack 1
Norwegian Language Pack Service Pack 1 or Norwegian Service Pack 1
Swedish Language Pack Service Pack 1 or Swedish Service Pack 1


Unexpected quotation marks are used in Norwegian Word 2010:
There was a change to this in Service Pack 1 for Word 2010, as can be seen here:
"Double "smart quotes" do not have the correct format in Norwegian text."
You can find Service Pack 1 here.


As can be concluded from the above, if you make sure that you have the latest Service Packs and updates, you will avoid most of these problems.

I hope this helped you. If you have any questions, you can always add a comment below or open a support case with the Office support.

This blog post presents an alternative solution to the issue described in the KB article 2592142.

Symptom

Consider the following scenario:

Client computers that print through a print server using Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 as a platform may encounter printing errors or incorrect output when they have an Office 2010 application installed.

Error messages or results:

a) Invalid font errors
b) Missing print jobs
c) Secure print fails

Cause

This behavior occurs because the version of the font installed on the print server does not match the version on the client that has an Office 2010 application installed. This appears to apply specifically to the Calibri font.

The scenario is described in the following KB article:

Office 2010 printing errors with Calibri font when printing through a Windows Server 2003 or 2008 print server

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2592142

Solution

The mentioned article suggests one of the following options:

Option 1: Install Office 2010 fonts on the print servers (recommended)
Option 2: Bypass the print servers and print directly to the printers
Option 3: Use an alternative to the Calibri font

In case that options 2 and 3 are not applicable in your environments, either because of performance reasons (option 2) or legal constraints or organizational rules that force you to keep the Calibri font in your documents (option 3), option 1 remains the only valid alternative.

The recommended way to implement option 1 is to install the Office 2010 from an Office 2010 installation source by performing a custom install of Office and install only fonts under shared components.

This approach however requires that you enter the product key and activate Office 2010 it even if you only install the fonts. Otherwise the installation is in an unsupported state. Another aspect of this approach is that you need to have a valid license available in order to implement the solution.

Alternative

Install PowerPoint viewer, freely available at the following address:

PowerPoint Viewer

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13

Benefits of this approach:

- successfully installs the Calibri font, thus solving the issue

- activation is not needed.

For WORD, the custom font is customized via the Normal.dotm template, located at %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates. Navigate to this location, right click on the template and choose Open. On the Home tab, in the Font group select the font of your choice (we will take Arial 12 as example for this article) and save the file.

 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

For OUTLOOK, the font is customizable in File menu - Outlook Options – Mail – Stationery and Fonts… For each of the options you want to customize select Arial 12 as custom font: New mail messages, Replying or forwarding messages, Composing and reading plain text messages.

This will write the settings in the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\MailSettings

The information written in the registry is in binary format and it’s written for both complex and simple settings.

For EXCEL, the font is customized via a registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options

Name: Font

Type: REG_SZ

Value: Arial,12

For POWERPOINT the font is customized using a custom template called Blank.potx. To create such a template, start PowerPoint, set the font to Arial 12 on the Home tab, Font group and save the file as Blank.potx in the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates folder. You will need to customize the font for every text box on the slide:

In ACCESS 2010 the setting for the default font size is overridden by the setting in the theme. The behavior is different than the one in Access 2007 where the default font size cannot be set by the registry keys:[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Access\Settings]"DefaultFontName"="Arial""Default Font Size"=dword:0000000a

The solution would be to create a custom theme with the desired font and setting it as the default theme. In Access 2010 create a custom theme with the font settings you would like to have by default.

- add the .thmx file in the .msp and point to a destination such as [ProgramFilesFolder]\Themes\CustomTheme.thmx

- add the registry key

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Access\Settings]REG_SZ
"New Database Theme".  The value should be the path to the .thmx file on the user's computer (e.g.: C:\Program Files\Themes\CustomTheme.thmx).

For 64 bit machines this would not be the same, but C:\Program Files (x86)\Themes\CustomTheme.thmx

For ONENOTE, the font is customizable via a registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\OneNote\Options\Editing

Name: DefaultFontFace

Type: REG_SZ

Value: Arial

Name: DefaultFontSize

Type: DWORD

Value: 12

In VISIO, the font is also customizable via the Visio Options:

1. Start Visio (open blank drawing)

2. Change the font to Arial, 12 in the Home tab, Font group

3. Click on File menu, click Options. Click the Advanced tab.

4. Scroll down to under General, click to select the “Put all settings in Windows registry” check box, and then click OK.

4. Quit Visio.

You will notice that the information was written in the following registry key:

 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Visio\Application

NOTE: While Visio 2010 will use this registry key to set the default font, this setting will only apply when no template (blank drawing) is used.

For PROJECT client and INFOPATH, changing the default font is not possible.

Now that we have customized the font for all possible applications, we are ready to include the changes in an MSP file to deploy it across the organization.

Here is how to create the customization .msp:

1. Create a customization .msp file using the Office Customization Tool: drag and drop the setup.exe of the Office installation source in the Run box, and pass it the switch /admin:

2. This will open OCT (Office Customization Tool):             
 

3. Select the first option: Create a new Setup customization file for the following product and click OK

4. We are now ready to add all our files into then MSP

Under Additional Content – click Add Files to add here the template for Word (Normal.dotm) and for PowerPoint (Blank.potx)

You should now see both templates listed with their corresponding location:

NOTE: in a migration scenario, for Word, to make sure that your template is migrated, make sure to add the following registry key in the OCT:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options]"MigrateNormalOnFirstBoot"=dword:00000001

The registry key is described in the following KB article:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2408845
Customization to the Normal template is lost in upgrade to Word 2010

Now, you can add the registry keys. You can choose to Import the registry entries (considering you have created them before and exported in .reg format) or Add (and you will have to create them one by one). Below is an example of imported registry key:

Under Additional content – click on Add registry entries and click on Import and browse to the location of the exported registry keys to import them in the OCT. You should now see them all listed as below:

We have now finished creating the customization file. You can save it from File – Save as – Name.msp

We are now ready to create the start-up script and add it to the GPO that will deploy these settings to the whole organization.

To create the .bat file that will be used in the start-up script, please open Notepad and use the following text:

setlocal
reg query HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Patches\9EA4D5478DD17EE45B1A1E670AC471BC

if %errorlevel%==1 (goto Patches) else (goto End)

REM If 1
returned, the patch is not installed. Install the patch here.

:Patches

"%windir%\system32\msiexec.exe" /p \\server\shared_folder\Name.msp /qn

REM If 0 or other was returned, the patch is already installed. Do nothing.

:End

Endlocal

** Please NOTE that you need to change the \\server\shared_folder to point to the correct path and MSP file in your environment.

Save the Notepad file as Name.bat in the same shared location (\\server\shared_folder)

On the Domain Controller create a new Policy and assign it to the desired Organizational Unit. Edit the policy and go under:

User Configuration – Windows Settings – Scripts (Logon/Logoff)

Double click Logon – click Add

Under Script name please type the location and the name of the .bat file we created earlier (please use UNC path and not a drive letter)

The script that I create above is also sampled in the following blog:

https://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2009/12/17/how-to-deploy-a-patch-using-a-startup-script-via-gpo.aspx

The logic behind the startup script is as follows:

Check to see if the reg key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Patches\9EA4D5478DD17EE45B1A1E670AC471BC
exists. If it does, than the patch is already installed and it goes to End performing no action. If the reg key does not exist than this patch needs to be installed therefore it will run the command to install it.

To know the ID that we need to look for, we right click on the MSP, go to Properties, go to the Details tab. Here we will find a Revision #. This first number is the uncompressed GUID for this patch. In our case it was {9EA4D5478DD17EE45B1A1E670AC471BC}. We need to convert it to determine what the compressed GUID is. The following blog entry discusses converting a GUID to a compressed GUID. https://blogs.technet.com/odsupport/archive/2009/12/17/how-to-convert-an-office-guid-or-office-patch-guid-to-a-compressed-guid.aspx

Related online resources:

https://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2009/12/17/how-to-deploy-a-patch-using-a-startup-script-via-gpo.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/odsupport/archive/2009/12/17/how-to-convert-an-office-guid-or-office-patch-guid-to-a-compressed-guid.aspx    

https://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2009/04/24/how-to-deploy-specific-fonts-in-office-2007.aspx