Change Office 365 Pro Plus Update Branch

Hello,

When you install Office 365 Pro Plus, you need to choose an update branch. There is a few of them that you can use for your different purpose. Sometimes, this is your IT team that force it on you. Either way, if you’re a local admin, you can change it.

First, this is the different update branches that Microsoft has:

• Current Branch
• Current Branch for Business
• First Release for Current Branch
• First Release for Current Branch

This was before Ignite 2017 (September), now, we need to use Channels, the ADMX and Xml Editor have been updated to reflect that change:

Change Office 365 Pro Plus Update Channel- GPO

Change Office 365 Pro Plus Update Channel- Xml Editor

So, here is the translation table:

• Current Branch is now called Current Channel
• Current Branch for Business is now called Deferred Channel
• First Release for Current Branch is now called First Release for Current Channel
• First Release for Current Branch for Business is now called First Release for Deferred Channel

Change Office 365 Pro Plus Update Branch

If you are on a version before the change from branches to channels (September 2017), you can use:

New-Item -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OfficeUpdate -Force
New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OfficeUpdate -Name UpdateBranch -Value "Current" #Insiderfast, FirstReleaseCurrent, Business
New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OfficeUpdate -Name EnableAutomaticUpdates -Value 1

Note: You can change the branches to target the one you need.

Then, check for update from one of the Office component (Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, etc…), it will update to the branches you chose.

Change Office 365 Pro Plus Update Branch – Force Update

Change Office 365 Pro Plus Update Channel

So, when you reach the 1709 Office 365 Pro Plus build, you can use the channel to target the type of build you want:

$CurrentChannel = 'http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/492350f6-3a01-4f97-b9c0-c7c6ddf67d60'
$DeferredChannel = 'http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/7ffbc6bf-bc32-4f92-8982-f9dd17fd3114'
$FirstReleaseforCurrentChannel = 'http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/64256afe-f5d9-4f86-8936-8840a6a4f5be'
$FirstReleaseforDeferredChannel = 'http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/b8f9b850-328d-4355-9145-c59439a0c4cf'

Set-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration\ -Name CDNBaseUrl -Value $CurrentChannel

And now you’re good to go with the new method to update Office 365 Click to Run.

Target Remote Computer

If you want to apply this to remote computers, you can use a GPO with ADMX, or remote registry.