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I have a Windows 2012 server that I need to remotely download PowerPoint to.

If I can avoid it, I'd rather not download Office. I just need PowerPoint 2013.

I'm trying to automate this process with a program that takes the URL of an installer (a exe or msi file) and runs it.

The only things I can find are iso files, which would need to be mounted to a virtual drive, then run.

I'd rather not Remote Desktop into every server, and go through the strange and unfamiliar Office 365 method.

Ramhound
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1 Answers1

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You seem to have something of an XY problem; the download of PowerPoint isn't as important to your goals as the ability to remotely distribute something that only installs the PowerPoint components you need.

Assuming that you've researched exactly what components are required by your print driver, and concluded that there's no way to install just those required libraries/drivers/whatever, and assuming that the licensing on the ISO version of Office that you have allows you to install it on other targets, you should be able to do the following:

  1. On any computer, extract the contents of the ISO into a folder. I use 7-Zip for this (no virtual disk drive necessary), but you can use the tool of your choice. Note: if you're going to be deploying this PowerPoint package to many different computers, your deployment testing machine should probably be as clean as possible (no Office products installed at any point previously) before using it to make a package.
  2. In that folder there should be a setup.exe file, or similar. Use the Office Customization Tool (OCT) to configure it to install only PowerPoint (and any other base components you need) silently. The learning curve for the OCT is gentler than it seems at first; there are a lot of options, but only a few need to be configured for your use case, and they're in sensible places in the menu trees.
    • If the options prove difficult to locate, this TechNet article talks about how to configure the OCT to perform a silent install (note: you'll still have to exclude all of the non-PowerPoint components as well as set up the silencing). For even more info on the OCT/Office deployment, the master index of TechNet articles on the subject is here.
    • When debugging different OCT configurations, I find it really useful to use Revo Uninstaller or similar (or just a System Restore) to scrub all remnants of previous versions in between runs. Otherwise, you might end up in a situation where you install an OCT'd copy of PowerPoint, find that it's not quite right, uninstall it, customize more things, try installing again, and have it succeed with a "false positive" because of residual settings from the previous install. You'll only have to do this on your deployment test machine, though. Once you get a good "recipe", you can deploy it as follows:
  3. You should now be able to click setup.exe and have it install only the components you want, silently. If you'd like a limited progress indicator, the OCT should support that as well. if this is enough for you, then you don't have to follow the next steps: you can just store the folder with the Office installation files, the OCT config you've generated, and the setup.exe launcher in a network share or similar and run it on your client machines. However, if you really want a single-click executable file, read on:
  4. To package the folder full of Office setup materials, setup launchers, and customizations you have into a single self-extracting executable, try using one of the solutions discussed in the answers to this SuperUser question (or this one). Be aware that you'll need to package up the entire folder that you extracted from the ISO, otherwise important setup materials might be missing. There are ways to trim down the size of the distributables since you only need PowerPoint, but they're more complicated and outside the scope of this question.
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