[Answer] How can I install only Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from Office 2016 Professional Plus?

[Answer] How can I install only Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from Office 2016 Professional Plus?

This was actually very simple in Office 2013 and earlier versions: when running the installer, you could just remove the other programs you did not need from the installation options. You can also see this approach in other people’s answers. But in Office 2016, things became a bit more complicated. Because of Microsoft’s design choices, the default Office 2016 installer does not allow you to choose the installation location or the specific apps to install. If you are not careful, you end up installing the entire suite, which can be a bit much.

People even raised this issue on Microsoft’s official site under the question: "Can I do a custom install of individual Office suite applications?"

From Microsoft’s perspective, Office is sold as a full bundle, so their logic seems to be: if you bought the whole combo meal, why would you not want everything in it? But from a user’s perspective, even if I buy the full combo and throw away all the chicken wings without eating them, that is my own business. It has nothing to do with you, KFC—well, innocent bystander there—or rather, Microsoft.

So in this situation, Microsoft also provided a roundabout solution. That is to use the /configure parameter with the SETUP file to adjust installation options or modify an existing installation. In other words, you can customize the installation by running:

setup.exe /configure (path to the configuration.xml file)

Before running this command, you need to create a configuration.xml file according to Microsoft’s official instructions and place it somewhere the installer can access. A sample configuration.xml file looks like this: