Office 2013 and WSUS

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Mister Natural

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Anyone know the trick to getting Office 2013 clients to get updates from WSUS? WSUS shows there are no clients needing updates even though I have turned off automatic update of Office 2013 on the client machines.

MS Technet article is not very helpful and figured someone here probably already knows the trick. These are OEM versions of Office 2013 that come pre-installed on Dell systems.
 
Shouldn't you be turning automatic updates ON, not off? Then as long as your PCs point to the WSUS server for updates, they should get Office 2013 updates.
 
Automatic updates were turned on previously on the clients. WSUS still reported no clients needing updates despite there being clients running Office 2013. That's why I turned them off. I assumed Office was downloading the updates automatically and I don't want all the clients updating themselves automatically and tying up bandwidth. For whatever reason Office 2013 clients aren't showing up as needing updates in WSUS whether AU is on or off in Office 2013.
 
You do know that you have to tell your clients to use the WSUS server, don't you? And the clients need to have Microsoft Update installed, not just Windows Update.
 
Let me ask you guys that have piped in here. Do you have clients running Office 2013 and are updating properly through WSUS? If so you've done nothing special to have it working?
 
Mister Natural said:
Let me ask you guys that have piped in here. Do you have clients running Office 2013 and are updating properly through WSUS? If so you've done nothing special to have it working?
Click to expand...
not 100% sure, but isn't there a GPO that checks the "receive other microsoft products updates"

You also need to make sure that you select Office products inside WSUS as updates to actually download.
 
Mister Natural said:
Let me ask you guys that have piped in here. Do you have clients running Office 2013 and are updating properly through WSUS?
Click to expand...

Not at the moment - I don't have a WSUS server running ATM - but I did. Do note that there's a patch you need to apply:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/wsus/archive/2013/04/09/problem-solved-the-wsus-export-bug.aspx

Microsoft said:
We’ve also added many new products to WSUS, including updates to Adobe Flash Player, Skype, Lync Server, and Office 2013. There are more WSUS updates than ever before.
Click to expand...

ETA I suppose it's possible that they've stopped the WSUS updates, but the effect on corporate bandwidth must be significant.
 
Mister Natural said:
Well according to what I read it is not a bug, but a feature as they say. Office 2013 is what is known as a CTR (click to run) program which is automatically updated. The thread states WSUS will not work with Office 2013. This makes no fucking sense and if this is the case why the hell does Microsoft has Office 2013 updates available through WSUS?

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/3969f295-7ad8-407e-acc2-bb0f0987869a/update-office-2013-clicktorun-deployment-from-network-share
Click to expand...

Everything I have found also says CTR and no WSUS support. It pisses me off especially with the AV computers that then want to update the office 2013 at the worse times since I forget about them because of WSUS taking care of 99% of the MS Office we have in use....
 
There appear to be two versions of Office 2013: the Windows installer version and the CTR version. I guess you need the former.
 
I've already contacted my Dell rep to see if they will supply me with a MSI version as the Microsoft Moderator claims I should be able to do. I will update when I hear back from Dell.

Still waiting to hear back but I realized I think I already have what I need. I already knew that the Office install is stored in the program data directory on dell systems and once you run the installer on the pc it deletes the installation files from the pc upon completion. I previously already pulled those files off one of the new pc's and burned it to a dvd before running the install so I had a copy of the install disk. I just looked it over and looks like I can run setup.exe with the command swtiches to do the custom install. Now will have to wrestle with creating a network install, config file and all the other bullshit needed to get it working.
 
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To wrap this up, it turns out if you want to use WSUS to update Office 2013 installs you'll have to purchase an open license in order to get the msi installer version. The standard install using setup.exe is a CTR version which automatically updates itself and does not use WSUS. Once again Microsoft fucks it up for I.T. people.
 
I burned the ISO and turns out the standalone installer is setup.exe also, but can confirm it is a standalone installer and now updates via WSUS. When I was told I needed an msi installer I thought it would be an msi file, not the case.
 
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