SOLVED Silent uninstallation of Office 2016 simply can not work

[Bojan Živković]

Hi, I have successfully deployed Office Professional Plus 2016 x64 to test computer (belonging to test collection) running Windows 7 Pro with SP1 x64. Command to install was simply setup.exe but I have problems with silent uninstallation of Office 2016 since command setup.exe /uninstall ProPlus /config Uninstall.xml always fails (Setup can't find or validate an installation file. Please try reinstall Office ...). Content of Uninstall.xml is as follows:

<Configuration Product="ProPlus">
<Display Level="none" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />
<Setting Id="SETUP_REBOOT" Value="Never" />
</Configuration>

In fact I tried to manually uninstall Office from command prompt but to no avail - the same error. In the end I decided to use Logging in Uninstall.xml and in the log there are these two lines of interest:

The Setup configuration file c:\Office2016x64\Uninstall.xml is not valid. Run Setup again without using a Setup configuration file, or fix the configuration file.

Error: Type: Failed to load XML document ...Uninstall.xml, HRESULT=0x00000001. InvalidMetadataFile ErrorCode: 1(0x1).

Silent uninstallation should have been straightforward operation but unfortunately I have not found solution yet and lost too much time. Even on technet Office forums no one has answered me and many days have passed.

 

[Bojan Živković]

Finally I cracked it:

setup.exe /uninstall ProPlus /config config.xml

where config.xml content is:

<Configuration>
<Display Level="none" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />
<Logging Level="Standard" Path="%temp%" />
</Configuration>


Only difference but seems to be the crucial one is Configuration tag where Product="ProPlus" is omitted. Office 2016 Configuration XML Editor was very helpful.

 

[Prajwal Desai]

Too quick. Thanks for posting the solution.