Users of a Click-to-Run-Installation of Office 2013 or Office 365 Pro Plus subscribers see an ad, recommending an upgrade to Office 2016. The blog post shows how to get rid of this notification and disable Office upgrade.
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As reported here, users of Office 2013 or Office 365 Pro Plus sees the following notification below the menu bar, every time they launch an Office 2013 module.
If a user accidentally clicks Update Office, the Office 2013 installation will be converted to Office 2016. But not all users are ready to upgrade to a Office 2016 subscription. Searching the web shows several forum posts (here) where users are complaining about this behavior and searching ways to block the notification.
Some clarifications from Microsoft
A Microsoft forum moderator posted here a few details when and why the notification will be shown for Office 365 for business subscribers:
- On May 4, 2016, Microsoft-initiated upgrades turned on for business customers, which caused the notification to appear in Office 2013 apps.
- On May 9, 2016, Microsoft paused the upgrades to address some issues. Fixes for these issues has been go to business users in the June product update.
- On June 21, 2016, Microsoft resumed upgrades for qualifying business customers, and the notification will now appear once again in Office 2013 apps for those customers, unless an Office 365 admin has taken the steps necessary to block the prompt.
Users who purchased an Office 365 for home subscription, such as Office 365 Home, seeing this notification, should upgrade to Office 2016. A user can dismiss the upgrade notification via the close button in the right corner of the notification bar. The bar will disappear until the next time an Office 2013 app is launched.
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In both scenarios an administrator may block the update notification. But we should note, that updates for Office 2013 ends after February 2017.
Set the blocking registry entries manually
If you're an Office 365 administrator, and you're not ready to upgrade your Office 2013 users to Office 2016, you can block the "Get the new Office" message, if you haven't already. You can use Windows registry editor regedit.exe to modify the appropriate registry settings.
1. Type regedit.exe into the Windows search box, right click the search result and use the context menu entry Run as administrator.
2. Confirm UAC prompt and enter the registry entries mentioned below to stop update notifications.
Using Run as administrator is required because default user accounts doesn't have the rights to write the keys given below.
For Office 365 for business subscribers
According to KB article 3097292 (How do I keep on running Office 365 ProPlus 2013), Office 365 Pro Plus subscribers navigates in registry editor to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\15.0\common\officeupdate
If the key isn't available, create it. Then add a DWORD value enableautomaticupgrade and set it to 0. After a Windows restart, the update notification should be gone.
The key entry works also for Office 365 Business, which is the version of Office that comes with the Office 365 Business and Office 365 Business Premium plans. Microsoft's KB article KB097292 also describes how to block the notification using group policy templates for Office 2013.
Block the notification/upgrade for Office 365 for home customers
The steps to block the notification are documented in Microsoft's document Remove the "Get the New Office" prompt.
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Ensure you have the latest Office updates by following the steps in the section, "Get Office 2013 updates" in Install Office updates.
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Download this easy fix and execute MicrosoftEasyFix20156.mini.diagcab.
This will set the necessary registry keys and disable the the Get the New Office prompt. If you are in need to disable or enable the settings manually, launch the registry editor as shown above and navigate to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\ClickToRun\Updates
Add the Reg_SZ value UpgradeAdvertised and set it to 0. After a Windows restart, the notification should be gone. Set the UpgradeAdvertised value to 1 reinvoke the Get the New Office prompt.
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