Install specific Office apps

If you are a Microsoft Office 2016 or 2019 user, you certainly noticed that the setup doesn't give an option to select which Office apps you do want to install, instead of the entire suite.

In classic versions you could specify this within the installer menu. However, you can still customize your deployment to suite your needs.

The reality is that most users won't make use of all Office apps, and some may prefer to save some disk space.

Optional: Office 2019 download in » this post

Download Office Deployment Tool

There's a Microsoft tool that will serve our purpose. We're talking about Office Deployment Tool, that allows to customize our deployments with ease.

The download contains a click-to-run installer with the configuration files

Run the deployment tool, click on accept and Continue

Select your prefered folder to extract the configuration files. I choosed desktop.

We have extracted the files from Office Deployment Tool.

Configuration file for Office Deployment Tool

Now open your Notepad and paste this code into the editor.

<Configuration>
    <Add SourcePath="" OfficeClientEdition="32">
        <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
            <Language ID="en-us" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Access" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Excel" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="InfoPath" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="OneNote" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="PowerPoint" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Project" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="SharePointDesigner" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Visio" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Word" />
            <ExcludeApp ID="Outlook" />
        </Product>
    </Add>
</Configuration>

Go to your Office installation folder or drive and copy the path from the address bar. In my case it's D:\ where i have my .img file mounted.

As shown in the image, you specify this on SourcePath. Make sure that there are no blank spaces left between the quotation marks.

If your Office installer language differs from the example code, you need to modify it. For example if your language is Spanish, you need to type es-ES.

Choose between 64 bit or 32 version.

Type 64 for 64-bit version and 32 for 32-bit version.

Here's the list of all applications that are excluded by default in this configuration file. So, for example, if you only want to install Excel, Word, and Powerpoint, you need to remove the proper lines.

Save your text file as "configuration.xml" into the folder where you have previously extracted the tool files.

Proceed to install your Office applications

Finally, open a Powershell instance on your desktop or inside the folder that contains Office Deployment Tool files.

You can hold the Shift key and do right-click to open it with a shortcut

Run this command inside Powershell or CMD

.\setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

This way when the installer runs, only the selected Office applications will be deployed instead of the entire suite.

We would also want to leave you an explanatory video, in case any of the steps has not been clear.

If this tutorial was easy to understand and helpful for you, we will appreciate if you share it on your prefered social networks. For the pleasure of contribute with people who may find it useful.