As I'm sure it has been discussed many times before, the Office 2013 OCT deployment does a horrible job removing all Office 2010 components properly.  Even with the option to "remove previous versions of Office before installing" selected, there will still be pieces of Office 2010 lingering behind.  It has been reported to me by our support department that this can randomly cause issues with Office 2013.

In these cases, our support group must manually remove the Office 2010 remnants and run a manual repair of Office 2013. Not ideal on 1000 systems.

To bypass all of this mess, I've attempted to add a command line via the Office Config Tool to remove Office 2010 as well as Lync 2010.  I have configured OCT to Run a batch file before installing Office2013 via the "Add installations and run programs" area.  The batch file has 2 lines.

\\<server>\<share>\Office2010\Install\setup.exe /uninstall ProPlus /config \\<server>\<share>\silentuninstall.xml

\\<server>\<share>\Lync2010\LyncSetup.exe /silent /uninstall

Nothing too fancy here.  Note that this batch file works as intended if I manually run it from command line on a workstation. So, I know that all of these commands are good.  Also note, the sms installer account has access to the server and shares specified in my commands.

This seems like it should be such an easy thing for OCT to pull off, but it just blows right by my batch file as if it doesn't exist. Am I missing something here?  What can I do in OCT to ensure that it doesn't ignore this command?

Thanks,

David

• Edited by DBruceM2 Friday, September 19, 2014 9:46 PM remove hyperlinks for shares in post

I've seen this sort of query quite a few times over the past few months. The Office 2013 OCT tool does a fairly poor job removing previous Office versions.

Your uninstall argument is probably failing because your referencing an xml file that resides on a server file share. Config Manager will execute your argument using the system account so its probably a permissions based issue. You can test this by running your uninstall argument using psexec which replicates this behavior.

I've approached this issue in a different way - you may wish to look at this option instead?

Microsoft have written some Office scrub vb script files to address the issue:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2011/04/08/how-to-obtain-and-use-offscrub-to-automate-the-uninstallation-of-office-products.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2011/04/06/how-to-perform-an-uninstall-upgrade-to-office-2010.aspx

http://marckean.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/fully-automate-removal-of-any-version-office-in-preparation-for-office-365/

You could  use a batch file wrapper as your Office 2013 Configuration Manager install command something like this would work:

@echo off


SET INSTALL=%~dp0


:Remove Microsoft Office 2010 Suites

Cscript %INSTALL%\OffScrub10.vbs ALL /Quiet /NoCancel


:Install Microsoft Office 2013 Professional

Setup.exe


ping 127.0.0.1 -n 5 > nul

Has worked well for me. Note that you would need to add an additional line to remove Lync 2010 - probably something like msiexec /x {YourLync2010GUID} /q would be best.

Cheers

Damon

• Edited by Damon A. Johns Friday, September 19, 2014 11:20 PM
• Proposed as answer by -Ath3na- Saturday, September 20, 2014 8:14 AM

Create two applications, one for 2010 and one for 2013. Configure 2013 to supersede the 2010, with uninstall checkbox thicked. Now when you deploy the 2013 and 2010 is detected on the targets, it will be first removed and after that the 2013 gets installed. You just need to configure the apps correctly, with correct detection methods for both and correct uninstall command for 2010 and install command for 2013.

• Edited by Narcoticoo Sunday, September 21, 2014 3:53 PM

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. 

I attempted to make some security changes on the file shares to circumvent any share permissions that may have been encountered when referencing the xml config file.  No joy.

I will put my batch files on the shelf for now, and take a serious look at each of your suggestions.  I will pass this on to our support staff so they may implement/test these options.

Thanks again!

General rule is, do not use unc shares or refer to them in your packages or applications. ConfigMgr is designed to download the content first locally so that your command can use and access to it.