Office 2013 Portable

Many thanks to Tito, Codyqx4, and Pantagruel for their helpful posts in getting this to work! =D

Been wrestling with this for 7200+ hours (always sounds better than a week ,) but have finally got it figured out for the most part (except Help). Will be testing solutions to getting Help to work... (kb vmware com/kb/1022287 might help). I never use Outlook/Lync/Infopath/Sharepoint, so there might be additional issues with these programs.

Extensive testing has not been conducted on this method yet, but since it closely follows the instructions for XP, 2003 and 2007, which I've virtualized and run successfully for years, it's likely these steps will work fine with a few exceptions awaiting tweaks.

You'll need Windows 7 (any version), Office 2013 Pro Plus (volume prefered, but you can convert retail using Microsoft Toolkit - forums mydigitallife info/threads/28669-Microsoft-Toolkit-Official-KMS-Solution-for-Microsoft-Products), ThinApp 4.7.3, KMS Server (forums mydigitallife info/threads/41010-KMSEmulator-KMS-Client-and-Server-Emulation-Source), .NET 4.0 for Windows 7 (www microsoft com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17718), and VMWare Player 5.0x (my vmware com/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/5_0).
Newer versions of the above may work.

1. Install Windows 7 32-bit, then SP1 (if Win7 doesn't have SP1).

2. Install ThinApp 4.7.1

3A. Copy KMS Server to desktop.

3B. Copy all OFFICE 2013 install files to a folder on the desktop,
or mount the ISO/CD in the virtual machine.
(You will run Office from either the folder on
your desktop or the ISO/CD.)

4. If necessary, use Microsoft Toolkit to convert Office 2013
Pro Plus from retail to volume.
(To Convert to volume)
a. Copy all files from Office 2013 installer to folder on
Desktop.
b. Run Microsoft Toolkit, last tab, click Installer folder
button and point to Office folder on desktop.
c. CLick convert.

If necessary, use Microsoft Toolkit to install language packs
into Office 2013 at this time.
a. Copy all files from Office 2013 installer to folder on
Desktop.
b. Run Microsoft Toolkit, last tab, click Installer folder
button and point to Office folder on desktop.
c. Install Languages.

6. Others have said stop the Windows Search service.
Do so now by opening Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services.
Then, double-click the Windows Search service.
Finally, click to stop it, and DISABLE the service by selecting disable and clicking OK.

7. Start Thinapp. Click Next until you pass the PreScan window.
Leave window open, can be minimized, do not click
PostSCan yet.

8. Install .NET 4

9. Clear the .NET queued items to get rid of the mscorsvw.exe process.
Click the start button, type 'cmd', right-click and select
'run as adminstrator'. Finally, type the following command followed
by the ENTER key.

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ngen.exe executequeueditems

To make sure mscorsvw.exe doesn't get in the way,
open Task Manager and manually kill mscorsvw.exe after running the above ngen.exe command.

10. Install Office 2013 Volume edition.
Customize what parts you'd like to keep or take out.

11. Click the start button, type 'cmd', and right-click
on it and 'run as administrator. Type the following
followed by the ENTER key.

cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS" /sethst:127.0.0.2

127.0.0.2 is the address used by the KMS Server.exe application. You can change this IP address if you use a different KMS Server running on a different IP address.

----Alternate Steps #10 & #11
10. Copy config.xml from proplus.ww folder on
the Office install disc to the c:\ root.

Add the following lines to the config.xml file
in the c:\ root directory.
(Change 127.0.0.2 to the IP address of your KMS server.)

<Setting Id="KMSSERVICENAME" Value="127.0.0.2" />
<Setting Id="AUTO_ACTIVATE" Value="1" />
<Setting Id="USEROPERATIONS" Value="1" />

11. Run from a command line to install Office:
(Change d:\ to the location 1of your Office disc)

d:\Setup.exe /config c:\config.xml

Customize what parts you'd like to keep or take out.
----

12. Copy #3A files to c:\ root.

13. Click PostScan and continue to the Entry Points screen.
Select the basic Office 2013 entry points
(eg. Word 2013, Excel, etc.) and
the KMS Server.exe file.

14. Click Next until you reach the Isolation screen.
Select Restricted Write Access (WriteCopy) mode.

15. Click to the Sandbox screen.
Select 'Same directory as the application'.

16. Click to the QA screen. Select No.

17. Click Next until Thinapp is finished.

18. Copy the Office 2013 virtualized files to another PC.

19. Run the KMS Server.exe file, then run Word.
Allow KMS Server.exe through the firewall as
requested.
You may need to open and close Word a few times,
waiting a few dozen seconds when Word is open
and closed, for the product to Activate.
Some have said they need to leave both Word
and KMS Server open for a few minutes to
activate.
I've found that it's not consistent, and usually
requires opening and closing Word & KMS Server
a few times and waiting a few minutes each time
before activation kicks in.

---

 

Problem with Spoon today is that it only virtualizes 1 application (or app entry point) per virtualized exe. Thus, you can't add multiple exes for KMS serving and such.

The virtualization does work easy enough, much like VMWare Thinapp, and there's easy wizards for older apps. However, at this point in time, there's no wizard for Office 2013 or CS6 - only older versions.

The KMS activation will thus require you to be able to run Microsoft Toolkit/KMS Server seperately and outside the virtualized Office on the PCs you desire. This seems to work fine in brief testing.

The virtualized Office 2013 is about 1.2GB for access, excel, word, powerpoint in Spoon vs. about 2.5GB in ThinApp. Virtualized Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2010 have all worked for years in ThinApp here - Spoon Studio is a rather new virtualizer, so we'll see. That said, VMWare is discontinuing stand-alone ThinApp for a combo software package, and neither officially has any word on virtualizing Office 2013 yet.

1. Install Win7 + SP1 in VMWare Player.
2. Install Spoon Studio.
3. Start Spoon Studio & click 'Capture Before'.
4. Install Office 2013 and configure as desired.
5. (optional) Run Word/Excel/etc and configure
Options as desired.
6. Click 'Capture and Diff' in Spoon Studio.
7. Click Output->Browse in Spoon Studio and set
the output file to be 'office.exe' on the
desktop.
8. Click Output->Multiple and select only Word
to be AUTO-START.
9. (optional) Change the TRIGGERS for each Office
application shown in #8 as desired.
eg. TRIGGER for Word is 'word'
This allows you to remember what you'll enter
later if you choose to run office.exe from
a commandline prompt and not from an icon
shortcut that has the appropriate trigger for
that application (word, excel, etc).
(eg. to run Word, you need to type or shortcut
'office.exe word')
10. Build.
11. Test the build by typing 'office.exe word'
from the commandline prompt, or creating a
shortcut with this.
(Adjust paths as necessary to office.exe.)
12. Spoon only lets you virtualize 1 application.
Thus, KMS servers can't be integrated.
However, as long as you can run KMS Server
or the prefered Microsoft Toolkit on your
PCs, you can activate Office anytime.

eg. Run 'office.exe word' to start Word.
Then, run Microsoft Toolkit and click to
ACTIVATE Office. Close Word and restart -
it should be activated.

 

Lovely.

Been trying the Exebuilder, but it doesn't see the added files for the tools I've added by hand. In fact, I can start Spoon, copy the tools to the c:\ root or a folder in \program files and while Spoon will allow me to click MULTIPLE and see that the tools are listed as startup files, after the BUILD, Exebuilder does not see any of these files. "Could not find any shortcuts." Haven't figured a way around this yet...

It does extract EXEs for all the programs installed by the software - eg. word, excel, etc. - so it works up to that point.