When the office updates were released last patch Tuesday, there were a couple of issues of mine that were resolved. Great, I thought, let’s download and install them! After checking that my installed build of Outlook etc. was older than the released updates I downloaded the updates from the Microsoft Download Centre and then went to install them only for it to barf:
After muttering briefly, I realised that I was not actually using a traditional .msi install of Office 2013. I’m actually using a Click-To-Run installation on the MSIT Windows 8 image. DOH!
But, wait. Wasn’t my office build out of date? Part of the advantage of Click-To-Run is that it will automatically update. Why was this not happening? One quick Bing search later I noted that in the article Microsoft Office 2013 Click-to-Run virtualization there were steps to retry the Office update :
Update 8-4-2013
After updating to Office 2013 SP1, the interface appears different. Note that there is not a button to check for updates
As soon as the updates were re-enabled – boom! They started to download!
The updates then installed in the background as I continued to use the applications, and only when all the updates had been installed was I prompted to restart them.
Note that a restart of the OS was not needed here, just the applications had to be restarted. Again another neat feature of the Click-To-Run package!
Those of you familiar with App-V will be thinking this is kind of familiar, and it is . Click-to-Run is based on App-V, which itself came from the Soft Grid acquisition).
Click-To-Run was launched with Office 2010, and with more and more people moving to Office 365 it is destined to become even more popular!
One thing that you may experience when running Click-to-Run is that some of the traditional troubleshooting tools that expect Outlook to be installed as a .msi will have issues. Mr MAPI (AKA Stephen Griffin) mentions a workaround on his blog for MFCMAPI to get it to work with Click-to-Run Outlook.
Cheers,
Rhoderick
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We have two installations of Office 2013 Pro Click To Run and two MSI (OEM supplied) versions. I do not like the peculiar and uneven update strategy of CTR. For April 2014, Word (across all versions) has a critical bug (KB2863910 - ms14-017). There are updates for the MSI version, but the last update for CTR was in March of 2014 (build 1508) and there is no April update to coincide with the release of the patches for MSI based Office 2013. This seems very wrong. Why are Office 2013 CTR users being left out to hang in the wind without critical updates.
I got an update to my CTR build yesterday. Can you see if there are any pending updates?Cheers,Rhoderick
Click to Run is neither 'popular' nor is it destined to 'become more popular'; it is a burden placed on users of the software by Microsoft. While they are trying to control software piracy, and that is their right; they have removed the ability of people working and living in remote locations, who pay dearly for bandwidth (that is remarkably slow to begin with). I have found trying to install and update 2013 a horrid experience, one which reinforces my opinion that the reason computers haven't advanced much is solely due to Microsoft holding the industry back...
The licensing is one part of this Jace. As a technical person the benefit that I do see is that installations are kept upto date. Yes sufficient bandwidth is one requirement for cloud based solutions. Even to this day I see Office 2010 RTM installations with not a single update installed at customers sites. They then ask why they are running into issues. On the Exchange Online/365 side this is another huge call driver. Reported issues are resolved when the Office client is updated. What sort of Internet pipe do you have - just curious? Cheers, Rhoderick