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Deploying Proofing tools for Office 2013 with ConfigMgr 2012

If you are in need of deploying Office 2013 Proofing tools to your clients, you can easily accomplish that with ConfigMgr 2012. I’ve previously done this in the company I work for by downloading an ISO from VLSC, unpack it and then used the contents to create an application in ConfigMgr. However, doing it this way has it’s pros and cons. On the plus side you can easily install several proofing tools at the same time on multiple devices, but the application content gets quite big (~500MB). Deploying that application to your devices would cause a heavy load on your network.
So how can we get those Proofing tools that we want installed on our devices? I’ve just recently discovered (this was news to me, but maybe not for others) that on the Microsoft Download Center, you can download all the Proofing tools that are available, each as an own setup package. The advantage here is that the setup packages are not bigger than 10-20MB (some may be slightly bigger). Let’s go ahead and see how we can deploy these with ConfigMgr 2012.

Overview

  • Downloading the Proofing tools
  • Should I deploy the Proofing tools as an Application or Package
  • Download desired setup files to the Content Library
  • Create an Application

Downloading the Proofing tools

The Proofing tools for each available language can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. Here’s the link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35400
It’s easy enough to just select the language you’d like, hit download and then go back and download another language if you need multiple. Remember to download the corresponding version of the Proofing tools for your Office 2013 installation in your environment.

Should I deploy the Proofing tools as an Application or Package

This comes down to how your deployment process looks like. If your users are aware of the Application Catalog (assuming it’s implemented in your environment), I’d definitely recommend to take an approach where you deploy the Proofing tools to the Application Catalog. Choosing this approach, you’ll be able to leverage the functionality of the Application Model. But if you’re only looking to deploy your desired Proofing tools to your devices fast and dirty, you should go with creating regular packages.

Download desired setup files to the Content Library

In my lab environment I’ve downloaded the Proofing tool for Swedish. I’ve created the following folder structure:
\\CM01\ContentLibrary$\Software\Office\2013\ProofingTools\sv-SE
For each additional language, I’d just create another folder according to the language tags available here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179219.aspx

Create an Application

I’ll assume that you have the basic knowledge of creating an application in ConfigMgr 2012, and therefor only describe the most important configurations you’ll need to deploy the Proofing tools.
1. Create a new application in the ConfigMgr console.
2. Make sure that you select to Manually specify the application information.
3. Name the application Microsoft Office Proofing Tools 2013 – <language>. Fill in the remaining fields so it suits your environment. Click Next.
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4. Enter the necessary information for the Application Catalog and click Next.
5. Create a new Deployment Type, choose Script Installer and Manually specify the deployment type information. Click Next.
6. Name the Deployment Type as you wish, I always name it in accordance to the application name and adds a suffix for the Deployment Type e.g. Script or MSI. Click Next.
7. Provide the content location. In my lab environment it would be the location mentioned above. Enter the following as the Installation program:

"proofingtools_sv-se-x86.exe" /quiet /norestart

Change the file name to reflect the file that you’re installing. Here comes the tricky part. If you want use the setup package to uninstall the Proofing tool, you’d need to specify <setup_file>.exe /uninstall <ProductID>. Instead of relying on the setup package to also uninstall the Proofing tool,  we can leverage that the setup package contains a MSI installation, by specifying msiexec.exe /x <ProductID > /qn. But how do we get the ProductID? The easiest way is to install the setup package for a Proofing tool on a lab device, open regedit.exe and lookup the uninstall string in the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
The path above is for 32-bit applications installed on a 64-bit operating system. If you’re running Office 2013 64-bit and have installed one of the 64-bit Proofing tools on your 64-bit operating system, you’ll find the uninstall string here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Look for the value called UninstallString. The Data of that value has the ProductID for our Proofing tool.
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Copy the {90150000-001F-041D-0000-0000000FF1CE} part of the Data (remember that this ProductID is for the Swedish Proofing tool). We’re now able to enter the Uninstall program for the application:

msiexec.exe /x {90150000-001F-041D-0000-0000000FF1CE} /qn

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8. Since we now know the ProductID, we can use this for detection of the application aswell. Create a new Clause and choose Windows Installer. In the Product code field, enter the ProductID for the Proofing tool. Make sure that This MSI product code must exist on the target system to indicate presence of this application is selected. Click OK and then Next.
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9. Now complete the rest of the wizard by configuring in accordance with your environment.
When you’ve distributed the application to your Distribution Points (or Distribution Point Groups rather), the application is then ready to be deployed.

Nickolaj Andersen

Chief Technical Architect and Enterprise Mobility MVP since 2016. Nickolaj has been in the IT industry for the past 10 years specializing in Enterprise Mobility and Security, Windows devices and deployments including automation. Awarded as PowerShell Hero in 2015 by the community for his script and tools contributions. Creator of ConfigMgr Prerequisites Tool, ConfigMgr OSD FrontEnd, ConfigMgr WebService to name a few. Frequent speaker at conferences such as Microsoft Ignite, NIC Conference and IT/Dev Connections including nordic user groups.

5 comments

  • This guide still works for Office 2016. (Both for OVS and 365)
    The following registry setting should be applied to allow Office to “Detect Language automatically”.
    REG ADD “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\LanguageResources\EnabledEditingLanguages” /V LanguageCode /T REG_DWORD /D “3” /F
    Where LanguageCode is the language identifier of your installed proofing tools. Example: nb-no
    When installing the application as system, make sure you run the REG ADD in user-context or set the value in GPO, for it to be applied correctly. PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit has the excellent “Execute-ProcessAsUser” and “Invoke-HKCURegistrySettingsForAllUsers” that also can be used.

  • Perfect! Thank you.. Im the the exact same process, and i had huge amout of trouble deploying the “all language” pack (tried merging it with the office pack, but then the setup pops up with a choise – and the pack it self doesnt support setup.exe /admin… sigh)..
    Im feeling inspired to deploy it this way 🙂
    Daniel

    • Hi Daniel,
      Well I’m glad that this solution was to your satisfaction 😉
      I hope the deployments go well!
      Regards,
      Nickolaj

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