Use your Start menu to check for updates Windows Update is included in Control Panel. To check for updates: Click the Start button, click All Programs, and then click Windows Update. The operating system, Microsoft has been continuously working for the enhancement of their operating system. When you enable Windows auto update you get information on updates of software like security essentials, MS office, etc. I am running Office 365 on my early 2015 rMBP. Over the last few months (can't remember when this started) and I am unable to use Autoupdate for any of my MS apps. The only 'solution' I have found is to uninstall and download the newest versions. They download just fine, they just won't.
Version 4.13 of Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac, released on Tuesday, contains a new Required Data Notice that will pop up immediately upon installation and must be acknowledged before MAU will continue to function.
While the user experience is not great, thankfully Microsoft has provided us a way to suppress the new dialog on managed systems. Read on for the details.
Microsoft’s Diksha Mehta began warning us of this upcoming change related to the GDPR on the MacAdmins Slack back in June but it became obvious this week that many MacAdmins missed the warning. There was also confusion when Paul Bowden announced that further privacy related changes related to each application, with new warning dialogs and preferences keys, were pushed back to August**.
The new setting to disable the Required Data Notice, which to be effective will need to be applied to computers before MAU 4.13 is installed, can be set using a defaults write or a configuration profile.
Because the dialog needs to be acknowledged by all users on a computer a configuration profile will greatly simplify deployment and can be added into an existing profile for managing MAU settings.
Below is an example of a comprehensive configuration profile for managing all of MAU’s settings. Let me know if you have any questions or please join us in the #microsoft-autoupdate channel in the MacAdmins Slack for further discussion.
**Unfortunately we don’t have the exact details on these additional new preferences yet but do know that some controls such as the SendAllTelemetryEnabled kill switch is moving to a suite-wide setting in com.microsoft.office which will make managing them across all apps easier in the future.
UPDATE July 23, 2019: Rich Trouton has also written about this issue and has provided both a script that will set the preference on disk across all user folders as well as a configuration profile that manages only this single setting and no others in his post: Suppressing Microsoft AutoUpdate’s Required Data Notice screen
UPDATE July 24, 2019: I added this key to the open source ProfileCreator application.
Microsoft Autoupdate Pc
UPDATE August 7, 2019: A new support document from Microsoft about upcoming changes in Office 16.28 includes additional details about the preference key discussed in this post. Importantly setting either option will suppress the dialog from appearing to your users.
Microsoft Autoupdate 4.22
In addition to the RequiredDataOnly string we knew about, the alternative option for the AcknowledgedDataCollectionPolicy key is RequiredAndOptionalData. The differences between Required and Optional data for Office are outlined in this support article.
Reader Tim Phelps, noticing that my attention has been drawn to Office 2008 lately, asks this:
The Microsoft AutoUpdate application appeared this morning and told me that the Office 2008 12.1.1 Update was available. I told it to retrieve it and, after it did, it tried to install. But it locked up during the installation and I had to force-quit the installer. I’d like to try the installation again but I can’t find the update or the Microsoft AutoUpdate application. Can you tell me where they might be?
Microsoft has tucked the Microsoft AutoUpdate out of the view of Spotlight, which is likely why you haven’t been able to find it. You can find it by following this path:
Yourstartupdrive/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0
Inside this MAU2.0 folder you’ll find Microsoft AutoUpdate.
After you download the update you’ll find it by following this path:
Youruserfolder/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/16807Office 2008 12.1.1 Update
The Temporary in TemporaryItems should give you a clue as to what happened. In all likelihood, when you bailed from the Installer application, the update package vanished as it was intended for temporary use only. The next time you run AutoUpdate (now that you know where it is) it’s possible that it will be downloaded again.
A few suggestions:
You needn’t dig for the application. Instead, from any open Office application, choose Check for Updates from the Help menu. This launches AutoUpdate. Note that if an update is available you’ll have to then quit any running Office applications because the installer is unwilling to do it for you before performing the installation.
Give the update more time to install than your typical Apple update. I updated both my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro with this thing and it was really poky. I got a good dose of the spinning beachball after I selected my startup drive. It eventually went away and I was allowed to continue with the installation.
Microsoft Autoupdate Mac Not Working
If AutoUpdate isn’t doing the job and you continue losing the package file downloaded by it, feel free to go to this Microsoft webpage and download the update directly. Alternatively you can, of course, pull a copy from the TemporaryItems folder before it’s vaporized.