How to Completely Uninstall Previous Versions of Office with Removal Scripts?

Before installing a new version of Microsoft Office on a computer, it is recommended to remove all previous versions of Office (simultaneous use of different versions of Office products on the same computer is supported, but not recommended due to potential problems). In this article, we’ll look at several tools and scripts for automatically removing any previous versions of Microsoft Office installed on the computer. You can use these scripts to silently uninstall Office on user computers through SCCM, Intune, GPO, or other deployment tools.

Uninstall Office Automatically with Microsoft SaRa Tool

Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (Microsoft SaRA, https://aka.ms/SaRA-FirstScreen) is a tool for diagnosing and fixing Microsoft Office errors (including Office 365, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, etc.). Microsoft SaRa provides users a simple GUI to fix common Office errors, allows to install, check activation status, and completely delete MS Office. The MSFT SaRa tool can be used to uninstall previous Office products on a single computer.

In addition to the graphical version of SaRa, there is also the console SaRA_CommandLine tool, which can be used to uninstall the Office suite products from the command prompt. Accordingly, you can use it in your automation scripts. All versions of Windows, from Windows 7 (with the .Net Framework 4.5 installed) to Windows 10 and 11 are supported.

Let’s see how to use SaRACmd to uninstall any version of Office

1. Download the latest available version of SaRACmd https://aka.ms/SaRA_CommandLineVersionFiles (17.00.8256.000);
2. Extract the archive to a local folder;
3. Run a command prompt as an administrator and change to the SaRACmd directory: CD C:\Tools\SaRACmd
4. To remove all versions of Office that are installed on the computer, run the command: SaRAcmd.exe -S OfficeScrubScenario –AcceptEula -Officeversion All
5. If you need to uninstall a specific version of MS Office (for example, only MS Office 2013), use the following command: SaRAcmd.exe -S OfficeScrubScenario -AcceptEula -Officeversion 2013
6. The SaRAcmd tool returns an error code when completed. For example, if the removal was successful, the following message will appear:

   00: Successfully completed this scenario. We recommend you restart the computer to finish any remaining cleanup tasks. Scenario finished with exit code: [0].

   

   You can specify the path to the directory where SaRAcmd should write logs: -LogFolder <Output Path>.

For example, the SaRAcmd returned an error on my computer:

06: Office programs are running. Please close all open Office programs and then re-run this scenario. Scenario finished with exit code: [6].

In my case, the removal was prevented by the MS Teams client set to start automatically (perhaps the same problem with the Teams Chat client built-in in Windows 11).

Therefore, you must kill all running Office processes before executing the uninstall command. You can terminate MS Office application processes by using the PowerShell Stop-Process command:

Stop-Process -Name winword.exe -Confirm
Stop-Process -Name excel.exe -Confirm
Etc.

Or using the taskkill command:
taskkill /f /im excel.exe
taskkill /f /im teams.exe
...

Note that under the hood, SaRAcmd runs the OffScrubC2R.vbs script to uninstall Office Click To Run (C2R) products. This can be seen in the task manager by the cscript.exe process, which executes the OffScrubC2R.vbs file from %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Temp.

Removing Previous MSI versions of Office using the Office Deployment Tool

If you use the Microsoft Office Deployment Tool (ODT) to install C2R versions of Office 2019, 2021, or Microsoft 365 Apps on computers, you can uninstall previous MSI versions of Office during installation. To do this, add the RemoveMSI parameter to the configuration.xml config file.

ODT configuration file example:

<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Current" >
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
</Product>
</Add>
<RemoveMSI />
</Configuration>

The RemoveMSI parameter specifies removing all versions of MS Office (2007, 2010, 2013, 2016), as well as Project, Visio, Project installed using the Windows Installer (MSI).

OffScrub: VBS Scripts to Completely Remove MS Office

OffScrub is a set of VBS scripts for automatically removing Microsoft Office products. These scripts allow you to completely clean the system from previously installed Office components, regardless of its current operability/health. These VBS scripts are widely used by Microsoft Premier Support (PFE). The Offscrub scripts are now deprecated, but you can use them in your scripts to uninstall all older versions of Office.

OffScrub scripts are currently available in the archived GitHub repository of Office developers: https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/tree/master/Office-ProPlus-Deployment/Remove-PreviousOfficeInstalls

Here are the main advantages of using Offscrub to uninstall Office:

• Allows to uninstall an old Office version even if the source installation files or the Office cache are missing or corrupted;
• User keys in the registry are not affected;
• Provides complete Office removal;
• Remove obsolete settings and all products (including Project, Visio, Visio Viewer).

How to use OffScrub scripts to uninstall MS Office?

I created a separate directory for each version of Office:

set OFFICEREMOVE=C:\tools\OfficeUninstall\
md "%OFFICEREMOVE%\2003"
md "%OFFICEREMOVE%\2007"
md "%OFFICEREMOVE%\2010"
md "%OFFICEREMOVE%\2013"
md "%OFFICEREMOVE%\2016"
md "%OFFICEREMOVE%\O365"

Download and save each vbs file from GitHub to its own directory. You can use the following structure:

• 2003\OffScrub03.vbs
• 2007\OffScrub07.vbs
• 2010\OffScrub10.vbs
• 2013\OffScrub_O15msi.vbs
• 2016\OffScrub_O16msi.vbs
• O365\OffScrubc2r.vbs

You can get the list of available arguments for any OffScrub VBS script as follows:

OffScrub_O16msi.vbs /?

Microsoft Customer Support Service – Office 2016 MSI Removal Utility
OffScrub_O16msi.vbs helps to remove Office 2016 MSI Server and Client products
Usage:  OffScrub_O16msi.vbs [List of config ProductIDs] [Options]

In order for the Office removal script to work correctly on Windows x64 when running by the 32-bit Configuration Manager (SCCM) client, you should use the appropriate cscript.exe version. So, to run the OffScrub VBS on a 64-bit computer, you need to run cscript.exe from C:\Windows\SysWOW64.

You can achieve this using the NativeCScript.cmd script:

@echo off
if "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432%"=="AMD64" (
"%SystemRoot%\Sysnative\cscript.exe" %*
) else (
"%SystemRoot%\System32\cscript.exe" %*
)

You can download a ready-to-use archive with all necessary files from our website: OfficeRemova-OffScrubl.zip (1.4 MB)

Below are CLI commands to completely uninstall different versions of Microsoft Office:

Uninstalling Microsoft.Office.Desktop App with PowerShell

Note that Windows 10/Windows 11 often comes preinstalled with Microsoft.Office.Desktop.Apps Microsoft Store UWP. You can remove this version of Office using PowerShell:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | %{if ($_.packagename -match "Microsoft.Office.Desktop") {$_ | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -AllUsers}}

You can also use the Get-Package and Uninstall-Package cmdlet to uninstall any application (win32, uwp, msi, etc.) in Windows:

Get-Package -Name "*Office*" | Uninstall-Package