Will my Office 2013 clients be automatically updated to Office 2016?

Question

Its such a simple question but apperently very hard to get the answer from.

with our E4 licenses. we installed 150 computers with Office 2013, last summer.
I used the 'ODT' method. in the config XML. I DON'T handle updates, which Means the clients individually updates from Microsoft (as it is now)

This is my configuration.xml

<Configuration>
    <Add SourcePath="\\server1\Source$\Applications\Office365" OfficeClientEdition="32">
        <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
            <Language ID="da-dk" />
        </Product>
    </Add>  
</Configuration>

Now I'm reading stuff like this on TechNet:

From the Internet If you've configured your users to get updates directly from the Office Content Delivery Network (CDN) on the Internet, the upgrade to Office 2016 is scheduled to begin in February 2016. At that time, the Office 2016 files will be automatically downloaded to users' computers and the upgrade of Office 365 ProPlus will occur.

Will my clients get automatically updated... this month? If so, I can stop it with a Group policy I suppose. And then what? setup my own updates share? And start using WSUS?

Answer 1

As per the text you posted above from TechNet, if you are getting your Office 365 ProPlus updates from the Microsoft CDN, you are getting switched over from 2013 to 2016 this month.

Source: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt422981.aspx

If you want to stay on the old version, you need to use the 2013 version of the Office Deployment Tool to download updates and post them to a local file share. Your ODT configuration XML deployment file should also point to the UNC file share for any new clients you deploy. Follow the guideline here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2014/02/03/managing-updates-with-office-2013-click-to-run.aspx

You then need to update the registry of your already-deployed clients to point to this file share instead of the CDN. There are multiple locations to change:

• Under HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\XX.X\ClickToRun\Configuration or HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration (depending on your Office version):

  • Value UpdatesEnabled (STRING) = True

  • Value UpdateUrl (STRING) = UNC path to your deployment share

• Under HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\XX.X\Common\officeupdate:

  • Value enableautomaticupdates (DWORD) = 0x1

  • Value updatepath (STRING) = UNC path to your deployment share

To keep the deployment file share up to date with the latest build of Office 2013 (with all the security update), you will need to create a scheduled task on the server to run setup.exe /download configuration.xml every week or so.

Keep in mind the above is a temporary measure at best. You must be switched over to 2016 by this September. That's the End of Support for Office 2013 via subscription. (If you're not comfortable with the upgrade pace of Office 365 you may want to switch to Volume Licensing.)

One other thing: Subscription-licensed Office 365 ProPlus is installed via Click to Run and does not use Windows Update/WSUS. You must use the ODT and a file share as described above. Using WSUS will not work unless you switch over to an MSI-based copy of Office (Volume Licensing).