Forum Discussion
Deploy Office 365 and uninstall stand-alone office at once?
Does anyone have a process to push Office 365 while removing older versions of stand-alone office (2016 or 2019) as part of that process? The deploy packages for Office 365 can have a remove option in the configuration file, but that always fails when an older stand-alone version is already on a machine. Our current Windows management tool allows for pre or post scripts, but I do not see that as an option for Intune. I could write a pre-install powershell/batch script if that were allowed.
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What error(s) are you getting when you try the built in "remove other versions" feature? We actually disabled that setting because it was too aggressive and we were getting too many angry calls lol. Our common error we would get when deploying m365 office apps are that it can't install because office app(s) are open, once we close out of all office apps deployment usually works.
An update could not be installed because Office applications are open. (0x0000426E)
Have you tried the removemsi switch in the config file instead?
Hi TomCSB​,
The easiest workaround is to package the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) as a Win32 app in Intune.
That way you can add a short PowerShell script to clean up any existing Office installs before running the new one.
Quick flow:
- Script removes old Office (Click-to-Run or MSI).
- ODT installs Microsoft 365 Apps using your XML config).
Gives you full control and works much more reliably than the built-in remove option.
