Office 2013 to 2016 Version Upgrades (Including Office 365)

This describes Office updates on devices and how Automox handles it.

The Trouble with Upgrading

Upgrading to a new major Office version can be a big step, especially in large organizations. There are functionality and licensing concerns at play here, so this is something that typically requires an informed decision on the part of a System Administrator. Because of this, Automox does not process these major updates. We will still show you the latest version that is being advertised to your device, but we don’t install it for you.

Automox picks up on what Microsoft is advertising to your devices. So if we stop it at that level, Automox will respect the change as well. Doing so will keep your latest version in Automox set to the latest current revision of Office 2013 as well as stop the “GET THE NEW OFFICE” prompts users see in their Office applications. Decreasing the risk that someone could click Update Office for an unplanned upgrade.

Stopping the Advertisements

Microsoft provides details on the specifics in this support article. It can be done either via group policy or local registry settings. Included are Group Policy Template files that can be used for this purpose.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3097292/how-do-i-keep-on-running-office-365-proplus-2013

Summarizing this, the fix is to set the following registry values on devices accordingly.

Office Business

Under this subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\15.0\common\officeupdate

Add or set the following REG_DWORD value under officeupdate to 0

"enableautomaticupgrade"=dword:00000000

This value can be set back to 1 to turn the advertisement back on.

Office Home

Under this subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\ClickToRun\Updates

Add or set the following REG_SZ value under UpgradeAdvertised to 0

"UpgradeAdvertised"="0"

This value can be set back to 1 to turn the advertisement back on.