Custom install gone?

Fantastic, thanks!  We use old work laptops for travel (no big loss if they get damaged, lost, or stolen), and typically only need Word and/or Powerpoint.  More importantly, since they're older laptops, they only have room for those two, not the entire massive Office suite, by installing that there's so little room to spare that Windows updates won't install any more, etc, it effectively makes the laptops unusable.

Some extra notes on this, I didn't need to run the vbs to scrape out old installs (which in this case was the full 2016 install), it worked fine without it.

Also, if you have the install DVD, you can apply it directly to that without having to copy the entire DVD to your hard drive.  To do this, extract the deployment tool as per BradM's instructions, the edit the SourcePath line in the XML file to include the path to your DVD drive, in my case E:

<Add SourcePath="E:" OfficeClientEdition="64" >

It's also a good idea to set the OfficeClientEdition to 64 since it really wants to install the old 32-bit version by default.  You can find other settings here.  The most useful one is the list of product IDs to exlude, but you can also add your license key to avoid having to enter it later.

Finally, run setup.exe /configure configuration.xml, you should see the install wizard (hmm, more like a blundering apprentice since it doesn't know how to do a selective install) start up and only show the icons for the one or two apps you've selected.

Edited post-install: The Product ID to use for the standard Pro Plus is a bit unclear, I used ProPlusRetail but when I tried to activate it it said I had the wrong product key, and started to go into an enormous download to get something else.  I was afraid it was going to be the full-bloat install and I'd be back to square one, but it only updated Word.

This page implies that you need to use O365ProPlusRetail as the Product ID, but I didn't want to risk that in case it gave me Office 365, which I want even less than the full-bloat install of Office 2016.  Has anyone tried O365ProPlusRetail rather than ProPlusRetail and gotten a standard install, not Office 365?

The message is generic,

"Is your Internet Connection Working? Do you have enough free space on your Main Hard Drive?"

and rather misleading.  The "space" part is generally a red herring.

The "internet connection working" is also somewhat misleading. It is not saying that your connection is completely broken, just that the installer is having problems.  The 365 installer is very "fussy" about the network connection.

I googled and found many possible fixes for this problem. I have documented some of them in this wiki:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/wiki/office\_365hp-office\_install/office-3652013-code-0-and-code-300/f5e9749f-6806-46cf-9eda-e25ec4890bcb

If you don't find a fix there, take a look at this other Wiki. Since this is a very generic message, this is a collection of fixes that have worked for many other error codes with similar messages.

“Network Connection” / "Network Related" fixes collected all in one place

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/wiki/office_365hp-office_install/office-365-install-network-related-problems-and/4d7f4eb0-5e91-4563-ace2-825ee64e0b9a?tm=1443211564751

I tried your method,  and when I launched the program from CMD, I immediately got error code 30088-1021 after it got elevated privileges. If instead of using cmd and the deployment toolkit's setup file, I went into \office directory (one level down from where I was) and launched the setup64 program and it began installing correctly. I do have Office 2013 installed still.

This is the configuration.xml file I made;;

<Configuration>

<Configuration>

  <Add SourcePath="E:\to keep\bittorrent\en_office_professional_plus_2016_x86_x64_dvd_6962141\office extracted" OfficeClientEdition="64" >

  <Product ID="proplusretail">

  <Language ID="en-us" />

  <ExcludeApp ID="Access" />

  <ExcludeApp ID="onenote" />

  <ExcludeApp ID="Grove" />

  <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />

  <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />

  <ExcludeApp ID="skypeforbusiness" />

  </Product>

  </Add>

  <Logging Name="OfficeSetup.txt" Path="%temp%" />

</Configuration>

</Configuration>

It's possible we may see it tomorrow as part of the VL release - I've heard conflicting reports so this is little more than a guess.

All right folks ,here's the lowdown from one of my contacts @M$ (an office MCT).

It appears as if because of product launch constraints,the functionality for a custom install was left out.

My feedback was, it will be forthcoming in one of the updates.  

So M$ is aware of the issue.

So should we expect an option for custom install in the near future, as in maybe a decade?