How-To Geek
How To Create a Portable USB Version of Microsoft Office Starter 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 Starter edition is a free, ad-supported version of Office 2010 meant to be included on new PCs. It only includes Word and Excel with a subset of features—but it does let you make a portable version. Here’s how to do it.
Update: looks like the link is dead.
Note: The download link provided in the following article is not exactly a “Microsoft Approved” link and may stop working at any time. Still, the Starter version of Office is meant to be ad-supported freeware, and they haven’t pulled the download despite widespread use of it online.
Creating Your Portable Office
The first thing you will have to do is grab a copy of Office 2010 Starter from this link. Once the download has finished, double-click on the file to launch the installation. The installer will attempt to download the actual files needed to install Office. Once it’s completed downloading, it will go through the installation—it’s really a very quick process.
Now that Office Starter is installed, head to the Start Menu, go to All Programs and open the Microsoft Office 2010 Tools folder, and then launch the Microsoft Office Starter To-Go Device Manager 2010—or you could just search for it in the Start Menu search box.
Again Office will now download more files.
Once downloaded you will be asked which drive you would like to install Office on.
Office will now be installed to your USB.
Once you see that the installation is complete your USB is ready to go.
If you open explorer you will see that your USB with Office on it has a nice new icon.
Office To-Go has a launch application on the root of the drive called Office.exe from which you can launch Word and Excel.
That’s all there is to it guys, enjoy your portable installation of Office 2010 Starter.
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Comments (34)
Taylor Gibb is a Microsoft MVP and all round geek, he loves everything from Windows 8 to Windows Server 2012 and even C# and PowerShell. You can also follow him on Google+
- Published 10/28/11
Hi,
Can did be done with the owned/bought/fully legit copy of Office 2012 Professional edition as well?
Requires Windows Vista or above!
thanks!!!
@D unfortunately you cant, the utility used to create the USB uses a a spin off of the App-V technology owned by Microsoft it is custom built only to use Starter versions files, im sure that someone one will hack it soon, in any case if not i hope they include this in the next version of Microsoft Office
ok so it only works if your running a 32bit version of windows :( any 64bit, and does that mean if i install the 32bit i cant use it on a 64bit?
Thanks, great idea but does not work on XP :(
Will This download work if you have Office 2007 installed. Or will it comprise the installation of Office 2007?
Thanks in advance for the help
Sadly it is only Windows x86 compatible. Isn’t there an alternative for 64?
gr8. Can I repeat the same with an offline professional plus version?
Hi I have this working on machines that are running x64 Windows 7 Home Premium.and on usb.
It does work on 64bit Window 7. I have it here now. Be warned though it does not uninstall cleanly and leaves disk drive Q in computer manager. Restore point gets rid of it though.
Frankly, I see nothing is to be gained by doing this. All word processors have the ability to save a document in one of the Word formats or .rtf I’d feel pretty stupid asking a person to let me use their computer to load a program into it. Also spreadsheets can be saved as .xls files or comma or tab delimited formats.
I’m not going to download it. Besides, I usually carry my laptop or a tablet wherever I wander and with a portable hotspot…life is good!
@Everyone this article was written on a 64-Bit installation onf Windows 7 Ultimate soi it does work on 64-Bit Windows 7, however i doubt it will work on XP.
@slomem i have office2010 installed and it works – no interference
i tested the Installation last week (for my tools-USBstick)
The Installation was quite big, but you can reduce the size:
- office.exe – 5mb (in USB-root)
- invisible Folder: “VirtualApplications” (in USB-root) –> ~400MB?!
solution: so, the installation-Files are stored directly on the Stick (oviously for the “click2run-installation”)
if you delete those files (the
- “click2run64.msi”,
- “click2run.msi” and
- “consumerc2r.en-us_14….sft” error…
But I wan’t a ONENOTE-VIEWER!!! X) that small or a ONENOTE portable (evernote doesn’t fit for me)…argh
there was sth. wrong in the post above:
- – “consumerc2r.en-us_14….sft” error…
means:
- “consumerc2r.en-us_14….sft” shows an error…
Right, I’m sorry. It’s incompatible with my 64 bit Office, not the Windows. So I have to install it from someone else’s computer? On the flash I mean.
i don’t know whats wrong! please delete the second post.
consumerc2r.en-us_14….sft doesn’t show any error, it can be deleted!!
an error occurs when you copy the files from one stick to another stick/hdd/desktop…
Two questions -
Is it truly portable ?
Can you take your thumb drive (created as you described above), and place it into another PC, that has never had Office installed, and will it work in that other PC ?
Are the adds embedded, or is it ‘calling home’ all the time ?
Thx a mill
Yes it is a good idea, but sorry not for me.
Thanks I’m linux user and using Libre Office ………..
RobCr,
yes, that Office-to-go is portable.
but you will notice that it is installing some prerequisites onto the hard drive from the startup screen when it is brought to another pc even though those prerequisites have already been installed on the usb drive.
it takes around 15s to 30s to install those prerequisites.
i think it is a common behaviour of portable apps. For some, they just don’t let you know they are installing things during startup. Microsoft is a honest guy.
Thanks for the info, but for Word and Excel documents I think I’ll stick with Open Office / Libre Office (Writer and Calc) where I can do all that and more!
FYI: Open Office has had portable versions of their apps for years that will easily handle MS Office produced documents. Writer and Calc are 100% compatible with MS Office produced documents, are totally free, and don’t hog up a systems resources like the Microsoft counterparts do. There’s even other free apps for Power Point and data base stuff, just to name a couple, too. But perhaps best of all, there are Mac and especially Linux versions of Open Office / Libre Office available. So just why anyone would struggle with Microsoft Office is bewildering. That is unless you consider the “stupid factor” where stupid people believe they have to pay money to get something good – that’s just not true.
About the only thing that Microsoft Office has which Open/Libre Office doesn’t is the horrible Outlook app. But for that, you really don’t need to look much further than Mozilla where their free Thunderbird app (and possibly a couple of free add-ons) will work even better.
Quite frankly, these “free” versions of Microsoft’s Word and Xcel apps seems to be more of a reaction to the “free” marketplace than anything else. And just when haven’t we seen Microsoft react like this? STOP BUYING MICROSOFT OFFICE!!!
The link does not work anymore unfortunately.
Further more, it is still in Microsoft`s hands, but there is a lock and you need to be an OEM partner in order to get it else you`ll not come close to getting it from them ; so I am also unsure that it’s legal. I`ll stick with free version of OpenOffice or LibreOffice for the time being.
amazing! the link not work anymore !
illegal ! ??? … a leakage ???
The file is no longer available, I get a 404 T___T
This needs windows vista to set up but once setup will it work on XP?
This link is no longer active but it was brilliant while it lasted, allowed me to fix the office starter on my new laptop. :-)
This product is terrible if you already have Microsoft Office. I downloaded and it worked ok, but couldn’t load it on a mobile device and now whenever I receive anything in Word or Excel it will only open in the Office Starter and you can’t uninstall it without help from Microsoft as far as I can tell. I have tried and tried but it will not uninstall.
BAD PRODUCT!
This looks like a good deal to have for on the go. The only problem is that the link for the download on this post is dead, no longer working. Does someone have the new one?
The link is dead. The one offered on Lifehacker is dead too. They must have ended due too many downloads.
Starter link download is a 404
Is there a way to include PowerPoint on the starter?
Your link for downloading the software is broken. On my machine it translated to this:
http://c2r.microsoft.com/consumerC2R/en-us/14.0.4763.1000/setupconsumerc2rolw.exe
Doesn’t work.
The link nolonger works.
Is there a way to get a copy of that file?
Thank you