71 Reasons Why To Create a Service Pack for Office 2016

Brass Contributor

At my enterprise, we use SCCM to roll out Office 2016 to our devices. To keep the installer current on patches, we add the current, applicable, non-expired updates for Office and place the MSPs in the Office2016\updates folder so that they auto-install as a part of the setup process.

 

Patch compliance is a high priority given the sensitive nature of my organization's security, so we need to keep the Office 2016 installer with all the current patches present, in the event that Office needs to be reinstalled. We don't want support personnel reinstalling Office and forgetting to check for all applicable updates from SCCM, thus not having any security updates installed for Office for potentially an entire day until it patches itself that night.

 

The current count as of 10/2/2019 for updates that are applicable to Office 2016 is 71 UPDATES. This causes the Office installer to run for 1 - 2 hours on i7 desktops with 16 GB of RAM and NVMe SSDs... (because each MSP update in the updates folder creates a new update installation session, and only installs one at a time). My problem is that I remember a day with previous versions of Office where we could still install Service Packs. I remember how much better an experience it was - even on slower PCs with slow spinning hard drives - to know that the latest service pack contains all updates except for the most current updates. This allowed getting Office installed and fully patched in as little time as possible.

 

 

Please, is it at all possible for someone at MS to create a bundle update or a cumulative update patch for Office?

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