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Create Configuration Manager application to uninstall old Office version
Create an application in Configuration Manager that will remove an Office deployment that was not deployed using Configuration Manager that can be superseded with a new Office version.
John Savill
December 12, 2015
2 Min Read
Q. What is the easiest way to create an application in Configuration Manager I can use to remove Office when it was not deployed using Configuration Manager?
Dept - SCCM
A. As an organization you may have adopted Configuration Manager and are now looking to roll out the latest version of Office but machines already have an older version installed, for example Office 2010 that was not deployed with Configuration Manager but rather was baked into the image which means you cannot supersede the legacy office with the new version for an automatic uninstall. There are a number of options to solve this however the easiest is to use Office Scrub to uninstall the old version by creating a new application that utilizes Office Scrub for the uninstall. For the custom application a detection mechanism is needed so Configuration Manager knows Office is present and therefore calls the uninstall. In this example I focus on Office 2010 but you could replace this with any version you need. The detection could be checking for the presence of a file such as winword.exe or checking for the product ID of Office 2010. In the example below I use the product ID:
Open the Configuration Manager console
Select the Software Library workspace
Expand Application Management - Applications
Select Create Application action
For the type select Manually specify the application information and click Next
Under General Information enter a name for the new application such as Office 2010 (or whatever version you need to remove)
The Application Catalog information does not need to be completed as this application will never be offered to anyone
For the Deployment Types select Add
For the type of the new deployment select Script Installer and click Next
Give a name for the deployment, such as Office and click Next
For the content point to the share that has the content of Office Scrub. We do not need Office 2010 files since it will never be installed with this. For the installation program just type cmd.exe (it will never be used). For the uninstall use:
cscript OffScrub10.vbs ALL /QuietAfter clicking Next is the detection method. Click Add Clause... and select Windows Installer then enter the product code for your version of Office, for example {90140000-0011-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE} and click OK. Click Next
Click Next for the rest of the wizard and click Close to complete the deployment type creation
Click Next for the rest of the Application creation then click Close to complete creation
This application can now be used in the deployment of the new version of Office as the application superseded. An example is shown below:
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