After you install the April 5, 2016, update for Outlook 2013 (KB3114941), you may experience random crashes of Microsoft Lync 2013 (Skype for Business) or Microsoft Outlook 2013, or both. This issue is outlined in detail here.
The workaround is to roll your 2013 ProPlus users back to the March build – here are the steps to do so:
Referencing this article, we can use the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\Clientx64\OfficeC2RClient.exe command to roll a user back to the March build. If your organization is using the Microsoft CDN to get your Office click to run updates, simply run this command on your affected machine(s):
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\Clientx64\OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatetoversion=15.0.4805.1003 *note – in the article linked at the beginning of this paragraph, there are other switches we can also add such as display level and update prompts for the users that we can also use depending on the experience you want to deliver for this workaround.
If you are managing your own updates, you have to take one extra step by first downloading the 15.0.4805.1003 build first if you no longer have it. This is because if we do not use the Office CDN as our updates location, but rather an internal file share, when running the command to roll back to the March build, Office will look to that internal updates location for 15.0.4805.1003. If it is not present, we will see this error:
If you are not sure if your updates are coming from an internal share or the Microsoft CDN, look to this registry key to tell us:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\ClickToRun\configuration
In this key, look for UpdateURL and the value will either be HTTP://officecdn.microsoft.com/…. indicating you are using Microsoft’s CDN or you will see \\servername\share\… Indicating you are managing your own updates. If you don’t have an UpdateURL value at all, you are also using the Microsoft CDN.
Once you verify that your organization is managing its own updates, we can use the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) to download 15.0.4805.1003 and then add it your internal update share.
Here is a blog outlining how to use the Office Deployment Tool (ODT)
One change we will have to make when using the Office deployment tool is we will have to specify the version we want to download because the default is to download the newest version and we want 15.0.4805.1003. Here is what your configuration.xml file will look like with the added Version value.
<Configuration>
<Add SourcePath=”\\server\share\…” Version=”15.0.4805.1003″ OfficeClientEdition=”32″ >
<Product ID=”O365ProPlusRetail”>
<Language ID=”en-us” />
</Product>
</Add>
</Configuration>
Next, follow the steps outlined in the Using the Office Deployment tool for click to run blog to download (setup.exe /download configuration.xml) 15.0.4805.1003 and once the download is complete, add the source files to your internal updates location. Now we can run the command to roll back to that build:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\Clientx64\OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatetoversion=15.0.4805.1003
Links:
April 5, 2016, update for Outlook 2013 (KB3114941) https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3114941
Lync 2013 (Skype for Business) or Outlook 2013 Crash https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3158521
The new Update Now feature for Office 2013 Click-to-Run for Office365 https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/odsupport/2014/03/03/the-new-update-now-feature-for-office-2013-click-to-run-for-office365-and-its-associated-command-line-and-switches/
Using the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/odsupport/2014/07/11/using-the-office-deployment-tool-for-click-to-run/