How to Download and Use the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) in 2026

The Office Deployment Tool takes over where the account page stops. One PC gets Office from the account page, and that’s fine. Then somebody needs it on 5, 50 or 500 machines. That’s the job of the Office Deployment Tool. ODT, for short, is Microsoft’s free command-line installer for Click-to-Run Office.

• Download it free from the Microsoft Download Center.
• Write the XML, or build it at config.office.com.
• Run the download, then the configure command, from an elevated cmd.
• Check File, Account in Word or Excel.

You download it and write a small XML file. The file says which edition, apps, languages and update channel you want. Then you run setup.exe with it.

What it gives you over the regular installer is control. You pick exactly which apps go on the machine, set the language and decide the update schedule.

No Publisher and no Access if you don’t want them. Teams can stay off too. One XML file runs the whole show.

The workflow stays the same from build to build. One fresh Windows 11 box or a whole office, same steps. Microsoft keeps a release history for ODT, and the newest build is the one to grab.

Microsoft’s current build, as of November 2026, is 16.0.20430.20146, published October 19, 2026. The commands and XML below work the same on it.

What the Office Deployment Tool is

It’s a free Microsoft utility, a single setup.exe. It downloads Click-to-Run Office from Microsoft’s content delivery network and puts it on the PC as an XML configuration file describes.

IT admins use it because one reusable file controls everything. The same setup then repeats identically on every PC.

ODT is tiny, about 3.1 MB. You download the .exe and unpack it, and you get two things: setup.exe and sample XML files.

That’s it. No installer wizard, and no Start menu shortcut. It just sits in a folder until you run it from cmd.

Under the hood it does two things. It pulls the Office files down from Microsoft’s CDN, or from a local network share if you set one up.

Then it puts them on the machine based on whatever XML you fed it.

Office 2016 was the last version with an MSI installer. Volume-licensed Office 2019 and everything after it ship only as Click-to-Run.

So ODT became the standard way to deploy them.

If you bought an Office 2024 volume license key, you’ll almost certainly use ODT. No ISO, and no fancy GUI installer.

ODT and the Office Customization Tool

People confuse these two all the time. Easy mix-up at the start.

ODT is the program. It’s the setup.exe sitting in your folder, and you run it from cmd.

The Office Customization Tool, OCT, is a web form. Open config.office.com/deploymentsettings in your browser, click through the dropdowns and hit Export.

It hands you an XML for ODT. It’s basically a form builder, so you don’t have to write tags by hand.

OCT builds the XML, and ODT runs the setup. Two tools, one workflow.

Once you know what the tags do, Notepad is faster. That’s what we’d use most days.

How to download the Office Deployment Tool

The whole process takes under a minute. The tool costs nothing, and only the Office you put on with it needs a license.

1. Go to the Microsoft Download Center page with ID 49117.
2. The language defaults to English. Click Download.
3. The file lands in your Downloads folder. Its name carries a build number that changes with each release.
4. Double-click it. It’s a self-extracting archive, not a real installer. Accept the license terms.
5. Pick a short folder to extract to.
6. Check the folder. You’ll see setup.exe and a few sample XML files.

That setup.exe is the whole tool. The sample XMLs are starter templates, and most people throw them out and write their own.

We’d always grab the newest ODT before a deployment. A year-old build can throw strange errors about channels against a newer Office release. Microsoft says the same in its ODT overview on Microsoft Learn.

Systems it runs on

You also need administrator rights on the machine. Internet access to Microsoft’s CDN is needed too, unless you install from a local source.

Keep in mind that the Office version itself still has to run on the OS.

Office LTSC 2024, for example, needs Windows 10 or later.

Before a Windows Server rollout, we’d check Microsoft’s system requirements for your exact Office version.

Creating the configuration file

Everything comes down to this XML file. It tells setup.exe what to put on the PC, how and where.

At minimum it needs an Add element with the architecture and channel, one Product with its ID, and a Language.

Save it as configuration.xml next to setup.exe.

Option 1: the Office Customization Tool

If XML makes your eyes glaze over, start here.

• Open config.office.com/deploymentsettings in your browser.
• Under Products and releases, pick 64-bit, which is almost always right now. Then choose your Office.
• Under Apps, toggle off whatever you don’t want.
• Pick your main language under Language. Add extras if users need them.
• Pick the update channel.
• Click Export in the top right.
• Save the XML and drop it in your ODT folder next to setup.exe.

Option 2: write the XML by hand

For anyone who’s done this a few times, Notepad beats the web form. Below are the files we’d start from.

XML for Microsoft 365 Apps

A basic Microsoft 365 Apps setup: 64-bit, English, Current Channel, license terms accepted, no UI. Copy it and save it as the configuration file.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Current">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

Older guides use the channel value “Monthly”. Microsoft still accepts the old channel names, so existing files keep working.

Current is the documented value today.

XML for Office LTSC 2024

The volume license works a bit differently. The channel has to be PerpetualVL2024, and the Product ID is ProPlus2024Volume.

Miss either one, and setup fails.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="PerpetualVL2024">
    <Product ID="ProPlus2024Volume" PIDKEY="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" />
  <Display Level="Full" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

Replace the X’s with your MAK key. Or drop the PIDKEY attribute if your network uses KMS activation.

The AUTOACTIVATE property tells Office to activate right after setup. Otherwise it waits for the first app launch.

Still torn between the two models? Our Microsoft 365 vs Office 2024 comparison breaks down what matters for each.

XML elements worth knowing

These are the tags you’d need 90% of the time. The rest you can ignore unless you’re doing something unusual.

Office Deployment Tool update channels

The Channel tag is where rollouts most often go wrong. Pick the wrong one, and setup fails.

Or Office updates itself on a schedule that breaks your users. Both happen more than you’d think.

For Microsoft 365, we go with Monthly Enterprise almost every time. Features land on the second Tuesday, the same day as Patch Tuesday.

That’s predictable, and users don’t get surprised. Current Channel is fine if you like chaos, since features drop whenever Microsoft ships them.

Semi-Annual Enterprise suits you if you need slow, predictable feature changes.

Volume licenses need their matching PerpetualVL channel. Mix them up, and you get this error: “This product cannot be installed on the selected update channel.”

Deploying Office in three steps

Two commands from an elevated Command Prompt in the ODT folder do it. Most of the wait is the download. When setup is done, the window prints “Products configured successfully.”

cd C:\ODT
setup.exe /download configuration.xml
setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

Step 1: download the files

Open cmd as administrator. Not PowerShell and not Terminal, since plain cmd keeps things simple.

Expect anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. Already have that version in the folder? Then ODT only fetches what’s missing, a second language for example. Saves bandwidth.

Here’s the annoying part: there’s no progress bar. The cmd window just sits there looking frozen. It isn’t. Let it work.

When it’s done, you’ll see an Office folder next to setup.exe, or in your SourcePath. That’s the payload.

The download step is optional for a single PC. The configure step pulls files from the CDN on its own if none are local.

Step 2: install

Same cmd, same folder. The display level in the XML decides what you see.

Silent runs are what you want for mass rollouts. Nobody wants dialogs popping up on 200 machines at once.

Step 3: verify

First look at the cmd window. Seeing “Products configured successfully.”? Setup finished. Then a quick sanity check: open Word or Excel and go to File, Account. The version and edition should match what you configured.

If you put a key in the XML, it should already show as activated. With no key there, click Change Product Key and enter your license. Our guide on how to activate Office 2024 has the rest.

Need a key? Our Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 key comes as a genuine license, ready for the ODT setup above. We email it instantly after payment.

The four Office Deployment Tool commands

Each command except help takes the path to an XML configuration file as its only argument.

setup.exe /download configuration.xml
setup.exe /configure configuration.xml
setup.exe /customize preferences.xml
setup.exe /help

Excluding apps with the Office Deployment Tool

This is why most people pick up ODT in the first place. They don’t want Publisher, Access or the old Skype for Business client on every machine.

You add ExcludeApp elements inside the Product block of your XML, one line per app. Setup then puts the suite on without those apps.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="MonthlyEnterprise">
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Access" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Teams" />
      <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

Run the configure command again later with fewer exclusions, and the missing apps get added to the existing copy.

The naming is odd, as the table shows.

Office, Visio and Project together

This question shows up on r/sysadmin every other week, and most guides overcomplicate it.

You add a separate Product element for each inside the same Add block. Here’s one XML for all three.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="PerpetualVL2024">
    <Product ID="ProPlus2024Volume">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
    <Product ID="VisioPro2024Volume">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
    <Product ID="ProjectPro2024Volume">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <RemoveMSI />
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

The catch: all three products share the same channel and architecture. Everything under one Add tag plays by the same rules.

So you can’t mix 32-bit Visio with 64-bit Office, or different LTSC channels.

Removing older MSI versions

With Office 2013 or 2016 MSI already on the machine, Click-to-Run won’t go on next to it cleanly.

Add the RemoveMSI element to your XML, outside the Add block.

<Configuration>
  <Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="PerpetualVL2024">
    <Product ID="ProPlus2024Volume">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
      <Language ID="MatchPreviousMSI" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
  <RemoveMSI />
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

When you run the configure command, ODT scans for old MSI Office, removes it and then puts on the current version.

A heads-up: RemoveMSI only touches MSI-based Office. If the machine already has Click-to-Run Office, skip the tag.

That covers Microsoft 365 and Office 2019 or later.

To clear out an older Click-to-Run copy first, use a Remove element, shown in the next section. Our Microsoft Office uninstall tool guide has more options.

Uninstalling Office with the Office Deployment Tool

You run the configure command against an XML with a Remove element. It’s the cleanest scripted uninstall we know, and it works silently on many machines at once.

<Configuration>
  <Remove All="TRUE" />
  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
</Configuration>

That one removes every Click-to-Run product. To remove just one app family, say Visio, swap the Remove line for a block that names its Product ID.

Handy when Visio went onto a PC whose user has no Visio license.

Offline deployment with the Office Deployment Tool

An air-gapped network, slow internet, or a 200-seat rollout with no wish for 200 separate downloads. Download once, and install everywhere.

Set SourcePath in the XML to a local folder or a network share.

<Configuration>
  <Add SourcePath="C:\OfficeFiles" OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="PerpetualVL2024">
    <Product ID="ProPlus2024Volume">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
</Configuration>

One download serves every PC, which saves gigabytes per machine.

Copying Office from one share to another

Branch offices. A central share holds every language, a local share needs only English. ODT copies between them with a DownloadPath attribute.

<Add SourcePath="\\serverb\share" OfficeClientEdition="64" Version="16.0.xxxxx.xxxxx" DownloadPath="\\servera\share">

One catch. With DownloadPath, a Version attribute is required. Leave it out and the download stops. The build number goes in Version, exactly as it sits on the source share.

Then run the download command as usual. Only the products and languages your XML names get copied.

Pretty much anyone with more than 20 machines runs ODT this way. r/sysadmin has some wild PowerShell scripts that automate the whole pipeline.

Updating Office installed by ODT

By default, Click-to-Run pulls updates from Microsoft’s CDN. There are two other ways.

Option one: run the configure command again with the same XML. Office only downloads what changed, so the second run is usually much quicker.

Option two: point Office to a local update source. You refresh that share with the download command.

<Updates Enabled="TRUE" UpdatePath="\\server\updates" />

Every machine then checks the share for fresh builds, not the internet.

That’s useful when you need control over when updates land, which is common in Windows Server environments.

If your Click-to-Run service itself misbehaves, our Office Click-to-Run guide covers the fixes.

Common errors and fixes

These are the usual suspects. Most come from four causes.

The setup log in the %temp% folder names the exact failure. Open the newest log before changing anything else.

The download hangs or errors out

Check four things, in order.

• cmd is running as admin.
• The internet connection really works.
• The XML has no typos.
• The logs in %temp%.

That log file tells you exactly what went wrong. Read it.

Files are missing after you extract

Antivirus occasionally quarantines setup.exe during extraction, typically right after you double-click the download.

Restore the file or add an exclusion for the ODT folder. Run the ODT exe again and extract once more. Then turn protection back on.

The update channel error

The message reads “This product cannot be installed on the selected update channel”. It’s a channel mismatch, a classic.

Your Product ID says 2024 and your Channel says 2021, or the other way round.

There’s no cross-compatibility.

Activation fails after setup

In most cases the key and the product don’t match. Keys don’t cross versions.

An Office 2021 Pro Plus key won’t activate Office 2024. It just doesn’t. Double-check which product your key is for.

Retail keys for Office Home 2024 or Home & Business 2024 belong to retail Product IDs, for example HomeBusiness2024Retail. They don’t belong to ProPlus2024Volume. We’d pick the Product ID that matches the license you own.

Product IDs for 2026

Keep this bookmarked. These are the ones that cover most rollouts. A wrong ID puts the wrong edition on the PC.

Each volume ID must be paired with its PerpetualVL channel.

On the fence between the last two perpetual releases? Our Office 2021 vs 2024 breakdown covers what changed.

ODT, Intune or Configuration Manager

ODT fits small and mid-size networks, offline setups and anyone without device management.

Intune and Configuration Manager use the same XML format under the hood.

Under 50 machines with no management stack, ODT normally wins. No extra licensing, and no setup overhead.

With 500 or more machines under cloud management, we’d look at Intune, since it also handles ongoing policy.

Configuration Manager is for organizations that already have it. It isn’t something you stand up just for Office.

Automating with a batch script

You wrap the download and configure commands in a .bat file stored next to setup.exe and the XML. Then you run it as administrator or through a login script.

Every PC gets the identical setup, with no typos. Hands-on time drops to a couple of minutes per machine.

Running it from a network share? Then pass the full network path for both setup.exe and the XML. Make a file called deploy-office.bat.

@echo off
cd /d "%~dp0"
echo ================================
echo   Office Deployment Tool: Auto
echo ================================
echo.
echo Downloading Office files...
setup.exe /download configuration.xml
echo.
echo Installing Office...
setup.exe /configure configuration.xml
echo.
echo Done! Check File, Account in any
echo Office app to verify the install.
pause

Right-click it and choose Run as administrator.

For network rollouts, put the whole ODT folder on a share, downloaded Office files included.

Then trigger the script by login script, Configuration Manager or whatever you use. UNC paths work fine.

Good practice for rollouts

Here’s what’s worth knowing early on. Most broken rollouts skip one of these.

Common Office Deployment Tool mistakes

• Running cmd without administrator rights.
• Pairing a 2024 Product ID with a 2021 channel.
• Putting a retail key under a volume Product ID.
• Closing the cmd window because the download “looks frozen”.
• Using an old ODT build against a current Office release.
• Adding RemoveMSI on a machine that has Click-to-Run Office.
• Rolling out to a hundred PCs before testing on one.
• Changing settings before reading the log.

Related guides

• Office ISO Download
• Which C++ Build Tools version you have
• What Software Center is and how to use it
• Office 32-bit vs 64-bit
• Office language accessory pack

Terms used on this page

Typical ODT problems and fixes

The cmd window looks frozen

The download shows no progress bar, and cmd seems stuck. It isn’t. Close it and the download stops halfway. Leave it alone, and check the Office folder size if you need proof of life.

Channel and Product ID don’t match

Setup stops with the update channel message. A 2024 Product ID sits next to the 2021 channel. Correct the channel, and setup runs.

A retail key in a volume XML

A Home & Business key in an XML built for the volume edition. Activation fails. With the retail Product ID, the same key works.

setup.exe missing after extraction

The folder holds only XML files. Antivirus took the executable. Restore it, add an exclusion for the folder, extract again.

An old MSI Office in the way

An MSI copy of Office 2016 still on the PC, and Click-to-Run setup complains. With RemoveMSI in the XML, the old suite goes first.

Every PC downloading its own copy

Each machine pulls the full payload from the internet, and the line chokes. A single download to a share serves all of them.

An outdated ODT build

Errors about channels nobody recognizes. Check the build of setup.exe. With the current build from the Download Center, the same XML usually runs.

Visio added to an existing Office

Adding Visio to a PC that already has Office can start an Office update too. A Version attribute that matches the existing copy stops that.

Office asks for a key after setup

No key in the XML, so the apps ask for one. Nothing is wrong. Enter it under File, Account, Change Product Key.

Systems and timings for ODT runs

The commands and XML files apply to Click-to-Run Office installed by ODT. Windows 11 Pro is the usual target.

Once you’ve done a couple of ODT rollouts, you won’t go back to the regular installer. The control is just too useful.