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Patching MS Office applications, politely!

  • 7 December 2022
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Hi all, I know this has been discussed in a couple of old threads, but has anyone got any new suggestion for a way to avoid Office applications being quit with no warning when they’re patched? I’ve had a couple of colleagues complain about it recently.

Thanks

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Best answer by BrandonG-Automox 7 December 2022, 22:16

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Hi all, I know this has been discussed in a couple of old threads, but has anyone got any new suggestion for a way to avoid Office applications being quit with no warning when they’re patched? I’ve had a couple of colleagues complain about it recently.

Thanks

Hi @sparrowhawk ,
Thanks for your question! You can scope Microsoft Office 365 into a Patch Only Policy and add an Installation Notification with a custom message to the effect of “Please save your work before clicking Install Now.” That would mean end-users see a pop-up notification at the time the policy is scheduled to patch Office 365 and prompt them to save their work before acknowledging the notification and letting it run as expected.

You can refer to the screenshot below for how to scope a Patch Only Policy to include Microsoft Office 365 as its only target.

Use the Filter Package List to search for the packages listed on the bottom right.

Please note that you would need to then exclude Microsoft Office 365 from your other patch policies. You can do so with a Patch Except Policy and follow the same steps as shown in the screenshot, but in that case it is selecting packages to be excluded from a policy.

As for suggested notification messaging, you can refer to the below image or draft one more to your own liking. Please note the character limit of 125 for Windows and 70 for MacOS. You may also choose to disable automatic reboots for this policy if you wish for another policy to be in control of when a device reboots.
 

Customize your notification messaging to specify Office is being impacted.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Brandon

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@BrandonG-Automox That’s a really detailed explanation, and super helpful. Thanks!

I’ll try this out and let you know how I get on.

Greg

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@BrandonG-Automox I just wanted to feed back that my users are delighted about the new Office patching policy. Thanks again!

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