When installing Office 2013 on a Citrix XenApp 7.6 server (or any version of Office on any version of XenApp….or any VDI implementation), I use the Office Customization Tool (OCT) to create a custom MSP to tailor the Office installation.

Here are my general overall steps:

  1. To launch the OCT, open a command prompt, browse to the directory containing the Office setup files and execute the command setup /admin
  2. Create a new, or select an existing customization file and click OK.
  3. Under Setup, click Install location and organization name and set the Installation Path and the Organization Name
  4. Click License and user interface, and then specify the following
    • KMS or MAK Licensing
    • Access the License Agreement
    • Set the preferred Display level (personally, I set the display level to Full because I like seeing the installation wizard doing stuff)
  5. In this example, I am working with a MAK license key and thus I clicked Modify setup properties | Add
    • 1-OCT_Add
  6.  When the Add/Remove Property Value window appears, enter AUTO_ACTIVATE for the Name with a Value of 1 and click OK.
    • 2-OCT_AutoActivate
  7. Under Features, click Modify User Settings and feel free to go nuts customizing Office 2013.  The settings below represent my baseline configuration settings
    • 9-OCT_Options
  8. Once your preferred options are set, click Features | Set feature installation states and configure the installation states of the various Office applications
    • 4-OCT_SetFeatureInstallationStates
  9. Another thing I like to do is create registry values that will “auto-populate” user information to give Office a somewhat personal feel for the end user.  To do so, click Add registry entries under the Additional content heading.  Click Add and then create the two registry keys shown below:
    • 6-OCT_Reg1
    • 7-OCT_Reg2
  10. Assuming there are no additional modifications needed, click File | Save As, specify a name, and then click Save.  Typically clients have their Office installation files on an IT or Installs share, I usually save my MSPs to that directory.
  11. To install Office using the MSP file, do the following on the XenApp server:
    • open a command prompt as administrator
    • type change user /install and press <ENTER> (yes, I still do it but you can do what you want)
    • browse to the directory containing the Office setup files and type setup /adminfile <MSPFileName>.MSP and press <ENTER>.  If the MSP file resides in a directory other than the installation files, you’ll need to specify the path.
    • when the install completes, download and install the latest Office service pack
    • once all required updates are installed, type change user /execute and press <ENTER> to complete the installation
  12. Use Citrix Studio to create any relevant Machine/Delivery Groups and publish the Office applications.
  13. Test Office functionality and activation