Steps to create Offline Office 365 Installation file for Windows using ODT

Question

Steps to create Offline Office 365 Installation file for Windows using ODT

Apps ICS 0

Hi all,

I downloaded the the Office Deployment Tool from this site https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117

Now i wanted to create offline office 365 installation file. Send me the steps

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Create a folder on the local drive, for example C:\ODT.
Download and extract the Office Deployment Tool into that folder.
Create a configuration XML file in C:\ODT. For example, for a 32-bit English installation of Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise:

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="32">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
</Configuration>

Save it with a name such as installOfficeProPlus32.xml.

Open Run or a Command Prompt, then run the download command:

c:\odt\setup.exe /download installOfficeProPlus32.xml

If prompted by User Account Control, select Yes.
Wait for the download to finish. A blank dialog box can appear while files are downloading. The download is complete when that dialog closes and a new Office folder appears inside C:\ODT.
Validate the download by checking the download location for the Office folder and files. If there are problems, use the newest version of ODT and review the log file in the %temp% folder.
To install from the downloaded offline files, run:

c:\odt\setup.exe /configure installOfficeProPlus32.xml

After installation, connect to the Internet, open an Office app, and activate it. Then go to File > Account > Update Options > Update Now.

For a 64-bit installation, use this XML instead:

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
</Configuration>

Notes:

The downloaded installation files create an Office folder.
A one-language Microsoft 365 Apps package is approximately 2.8 GB.
If downloading from a local network source by using DownloadPath, a Version must also be specified in the XML.

Answer 2

Liora 1,630 Independent Advisor

Dear @Apps ICS,

I hope you’re having a good day.

You can use the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) to download the Microsoft 365 installation files once and then use those files for offline installation on one or more Windows devices.

Extract the Office Deployment Tool

Download and run the ODT package you already obtained, then extract it to a folder such as: C:\ODT

You should see setup.exe in that folder.

Create a configuration XML file

Create a file named download.xml in the same folder with content similar to the following:

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Current">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
</Configuration>

You can change the language or Office edition as needed.

Download the offline installation files

Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run:

cd C:\ODT
setup.exe /download download.xml

ODT will download the Microsoft 365 installation files into an Office subfolder under your download location.

Use the downloaded files for offline installation

Once the download is complete, keep the following together:

C:\ODT\setup.exe
C:\ODT\download.xml
C:\ODT\Office\

To install Microsoft 365 from these local files, run:

setup.exe /configure download.xml

No additional Office download will be required if the installation files are already present locally.

For reference:

These steps will create an offline Microsoft 365 installation source that you can copy to other machines or a network share and use for deployment.

Warm regards,

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Apps ICS 0 Reputation points

2026-08-18T09:04:13.9933333+00:00

Dear @Liora

I followed the instruction and when i tried to install it; the below screen is showing. This means my device needs to be connected to the internet. What i wanted was to create an offline package and be able to install Office 365 offline.

Thanks for your help!
Apps ICS 0 Reputation points

2026-08-18T09:42:16.39+00:00

I also got the below error message. Looks like i'm missing some file when the Office folder was downloading
Liora 1,630 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-08-18T11:25:46.3566667+00:00
Hi Apps ICS,

Thank you for the screenshots.

The second screenshot is the more important clue here. The error:

"Couldn't install - We couldn't find the specified configuration file

Error Code: 0-2048 (0)"

indicates that the Office Deployment Tool cannot locate the XML configuration file specified in the command. Until that issue is resolved, ODT cannot properly install Office or use the offline installation source.

I recommend verifying that:

setup.exe

download.xml

are located in the same folder, for example:

C:\ODT\ ├─ setup.exe ├─ download.xml └─ Office\

Then open Command Prompt in that folder and run:

setup.exe /configure download.xml

Alternatively, you can use the full path to the XML file:

setup.exe /configure C:\ODT\download.xml

I would also suggest confirming that the download process completed successfully and created the offline source files under: C:\ODT\Office\Data

If the Office\Data folder was not created or contains only a few files, the offline package may not have downloaded completely, which would explain why Office later attempts to download files from the Internet.

To help identify exactly where the process is failing, please share:

The exact command you used for both the /download and /configure steps.

A screenshot of the contents of your C:\ODT folder showing setup.exe, the XML file, and the Office folder.

Those details should allow us to determine whether the issue is with the XML file location or with the offline source download itself.
Liora 1,630 Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-08-19T15:06:32.1966667+00:00

Hi Apps ICS,

I hope you're having a great day.

I'm following up to see if you've made any progress with this issue or if there are any updates you'd like to share.

Wishing you all the best, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards.