Is it possible to enable logging or any kind of debug mode for the Office Deployment Tool

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I'm having a difficult issue with installing Office 2016 using the Office Deployment Tool (ODT). The problem is compounded by the fact that I can't see any way to get information about what ODT is actually doing – it simply gives this vague status message, and no other information beyond error messages (and I've extracted as much relevant info from those as I can).

We're getting things ready

According to this MS blog article from 2010, for earlier versions of Office it was possible to enable "Verbose logging" for their installers:

The first thing to do when troubleshooting Office install failures is to ensure that MSI verbose logging is enabled. In Office 2007/2010 there is a setup.exe log file that gets created by default, but it does not give the amount of detail that is usually required to diagnose an installation failure. With verbose MSI logging enabled we will get a verbose log file for each component that Office 2007/2010 installs. We will have a verbose log for the install of the Word component, one for Excel, and so on.

To enable verbose logging you will want to set the following registry keys.
 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer] 
 "Debug"=dword:00000007 
 "Logging"="voicewarmup"

However, this is specific to the old installation procedure which appears to have been per application ("a verbose log for the install of the Word component, one for Excel, and so on"), whereas my understanding is that ODT (introduced with Office 2013) installs them all as one.

Is there anything like this that allows verbose logging, or any other form of debugging, for installs using the Office Deployment Tool with Office 2016?

Best Answer

Update: This is no longer a valid answer. According to Configuration options for the Office Deployment Tool:

"The Logging element is no longer supported as a configuration option for the Office Deployment Tool. Log files can be found in the %temp% folder"

It turns out logging settings for ODT is controlled by the Configuration.xml config file, which toggles between Off and Standard logging.

From the reference for the config xml, the default is Standard logging, saved to %TEMP%.

I had trouble finding the relevant logs there, so I got easier-to-use results by creating a log folder in the folder I was using for ODT and adding the following to my config file, below the <Configuration> but outside the <Add>:

  <Logging Level="Standard" Path="C:\odt\log" />

The log files themselves have a filename with no reference to ODT (hence my problems finding them in %TEMP%), of format PCNAME-DATESTAMP-TIMESTAMP for example MYPC-20151120-1330.

Here's an example of a complete configuration that worked for me, including the logging config, so you can see more easily where it goes:

<Configuration>

  <Add OfficeClientEdition="32" Branch="Current" Version="16.0.4229.1029" SourcePath="C:\odt">
    <Product ID="O365BusinessRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>

  <Logging Level="Standard" Path="C:\odt\log" />

</Configuration>

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Word – Uninstall individual Office 2016 programs

Seems you installed Office in Click-to-Run way, unfortunately it's not possible to select what you want to install by default

But you can try changing installation config to achieve this

As the answer in this post in Office Tech, you can add something like below in xml config to skip applications you don't want

<ExcludeApp ID= "Access" />

If you want only Word, then exclude all but Word in config like

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" >
    <Product ID="ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us"/>
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Access" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Lync" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Outlook" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "OneDrive" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "OneNote" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Groove" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Publisher" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "SharePointDesigner" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "PowerPoint" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Excel" />
      <ExcludeApp ID= "Visio" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
</Configuration>

After editing, save and run installer

Full Office product list from Microsoft TechNet

ID="Access"
ID="Excel"
ID="Groove"
ID="InfoPath"
ID="Lync"
ID="OneDrive"
ID="OneNote"
ID="Outlook"
ID="PowerPoint"
ID="Publisher"
ID="SharePointDesigner"
ID="Visio"
ID="Word"

Office Deployment Tool won’t recognise downloaded install files and tries to re-download

I FINALLY cracked it with the help of the ODT log files.

Basically, unlike what the docs say, manually setting a SourcePath is mandatory if you want a local/offline install, and the source path should exclude the top level directory name of the install bundle (so should not end with Office unless you've got a folder named Office inside another folder named Office).

My problem was caused by two misleading / out-of-date points in Microsoft's Configuration file reference page, coupled with the complete lack of feedback in the installer UI. Specifically:

MS give this as an example of a typical SourcePath entry: C:\Preload\Office - so I had entered my source paths similarly: C:\odt\Office, including "Office", the name of the top level bundle folder. This was causing the installer to fail to find my downloaded files - it should exclude the folder name of the bundle. My source path should have been SourcePath="C:\odt" and Microsoft's example should have been C:\Preload (or, they should have a note saying this only works for paths like C:\Preload\Office\Office\Data\etc...
MS say the following:

If you don’t specify SourcePath in configure mode, Setup will look in the current folder for the Office source files. If the Office source files aren’t found in the current folder, Setup will look on Office 365 for them.

Maybe that was true for Office 2013, I don't know, but based on my hours of trial and error, the inverse appears to be true for Office 2016.

When I ran the setup.exe with no SourcePath in the config file, it looked online before checking for a local copy, and began a download instead of using a local copy in the default position in the same directory.

<speculation> I guess such a change would be consistent with Microsoft's changing attitudes to updates, which were roughly "Use the latest version cautiously, it might break things" in 2012 and are roughly "If in doubt, update update update" today?</speculation>

My settings which worked looked like this:

<Configuration>

  <Add OfficeClientEdition="32" Branch="Current" Version="16.0.4229.1029" SourcePath="C:\odt">
    <Product ID="O365BusinessRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>

  <Logging Level="Standard" Path="C:\odt\log" />

</Configuration>

I don't believe the version number is essential (and I'm not re-installing to find out!); if anyone with similar problems discovers they do need theirs, I took mine from the folder name under Office\Data.

If anyone knows how I can report the issues with the documentation to Microsoft, please drop me a comment.

Best Answer

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