Custom install gone?

The "as yet" contains the built-in implication that they intend to do something about it, however earlier comments in this thread (see the post by Rohn007, there doesn't seem to be a way to link to individual posts) don't hold out much hope if it's been an ongoing problem since 2010.

MS has not released, as yet, an msi installation for 365/2016 Pro Plus

Good question, I'd poked around the DVD to see if there was any way to extract/install only the parts I wanted and remember seeing about 1.5GB of cabs and whatnot, but I didn't poke into every subdirectory, and wasn't really paying attention to overall sizes (the DVD is at work so I can't check now).

It's actually not a full install (or at least it better not be!), just Word.  So 1 1/2 GB of disk space for a word processor.  That must be some sort of sign that we need to tear down civilisation and let the ants have a go.

It's a pity WPS Office is still some way behind MS Office in terms of getting all the little details right, that's a 60MB download (yes, that's not a typo, 60MB) for the equivalent of Office.  If the current rate of progress continues, within the next few years MS Office will have become bad enough, and WPS Office good enough, that it's worth making the switch.

Take a close look at your installation disk.  Is it a DVD that is almost full, ie about 3.5 GB or is it only using about 750MB.  The full disk is a full installation file, like a MSI. But, AFIK all 365 installers are just the 700-750MB "stub" that requires the internet downloads to finish the installation.

I was going to say that 1.45 GB for a "full office" installation is a clear indication that you only have a partial click to run installation. But then I just checked my Office 2013 Pro Plus MSI install and it is 1.16GB.  So, apparently my understanding of the size of a full Office installation is wrong. <grin>

Take a look at the 365 Pro Plus version. As I understand it, it does include the full local install right from the start.

Also, with Office 365, even a full year subscription, you have to connect to the internet every 30 days (give or take a few) to verify your subscription status.

That was the whole reason for not wanting Office365, I'll be wanting to use it while travelling so can't have something that needs a huge background download to get the bits I want to use.  Hopefully installing off physical media (DVD) means it's copied across everything it needs rather than relying on background downloads to do things.

I did lose about 3GB of disk space just from (supposedly) installing standalone Word while %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office is only 1.45GB, so whatever it's done it's copied a vast amount of junk across to the hard drive.  %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\root\Office16 shows some files that aren't Word (e.g. excelcnv.exe), but no traces of other bloat, and in particular no trace of Outlook, Skype for Business, OneDrive, OneNote, and all the other rubbish that MS insists on dropping onto your machine.  It's like buying a laptop crammed with unwanted vendor-installed bloatware, the only difference being that you can at least uninstall the vendor bloatware.