Here and then, Microsoft makes software updates and new versions available to help improve server security, performance, and reliability. This article describes how to apply software updates or new versions to individual servers in an Office Online Server farm. Updates that are released for Office Online Server will update Office Online Server and any Office Online Server language packs that are installed. There are no separate updates for Office Online Server language packs. This guide applies only to a single server farm. If you wish to apply software updates to multiple server farms, kindly take a look at this link: Here is how to set up and Configure Office Online Server.
Caution! Applying Office Online Server updates or new versions by using the automatic updates process isn’t supported with Office Online Server. This is because updates to an Office Online Server must be applied in a specific way. Here are some related guides: How to Cancel Office 365 Family Subscription, How to install and activate Office 2019 on your Mac PC, How do you change the account that Office says it belongs to on a Mac, and how to Fix Microsoft Excel Crash Issue
Note: If Office Online Server updates are applied automatically, users may not be able to view or edit documents in Office Online. If this happens, you have to rebuild your Office Online Server farm.
To rebuild a farm, you must remove the Office Online Server from the farm by using,Remove-OfficeWebAppsMachine, uninstall Office Online Server by using Add or remove programs and then reinstall Office Online Server by following the steps that are described in how to install, and configure the Office Online Server. After you have reinstalled, you will have to apply the update in the following way described below.
Note: I am sure you do not want to embark on this cumbersome route. Therefore, it is paramount that you pay attention to the steps in the update process for the Office Online Server farm.
What to note before applying Windows Update
As part of the update process, you’ll have to re-create the Office Online Server farm. To prepare to re-create the Office Online Server farm, review your current Office Online Server farm properties by running the Microsoft PowerShell cmdlet Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm and review the parameters for New-OfficeWebAppsFarm. The parameters that you use for New-OfficeWebAppsFarm should be the same parameters that you used when you first set up the Office Online Server farm.
Note: That when you have completed updating your farm, you need to re-add any data model servers that you had configured for Excel Online.
I will advise you to kindly back up your server or take a snapshot. Also, you could save the configuration file if you wish by using the command below.
Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm > c:\OfficeOnlineServer.txtHow to apply software updates or new versions to a single server farm
As the title says, this update applies only to a single server farm.
Step 1: On the Office Online Server that you want to apply the software update to, open the Microsoft PowerShell prompt as an administrator and run the following command.
Remove-OfficeWebAppsMachine
Since I only have a single server Office Web Apps farm. If the server is removed from the farm, there is no longer a farm.
Step 2 (optionally only for a new version): If this is a new release of Office Online Server that you downloaded from the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC), then you must uninstall the existing version before you install the new version.
Note: If this is an update from Microsoft Update, then there's no need to uninstall Office Online Server.
Since I am not installing a new version, I will proceed to step 3 below.
3: Install the Office Online Server update or a new version on that server. At the time of writing this guide, here is the most recent Security Update for Microsoft Office Online Server (KB5002276) farm deployment. This can be downloaded from the Microsoft Update Catalogue if you are not using WSUS as recommended.
Kindly accept the EULA, and click on continue to start the update process.
As you can see below, the update is currently being applied.
If prompted, restart the server. Click on “Yes“.
After the server reboot, the farm must be configured again. Therefore, proceed to the next step.
4: Open the Microsoft PowerShell prompt as an administrator and run the New-OfficeWebAppsFarm cmdlet to re-create an Office Online Server farm. The URL you specify for -InternalURL is the name of the server that runs Office Online Server, such as https://interntechdarchive.com. Kindly refer to the command below, all you need to do is to replace the URLs with yours!
New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl "https://interntechdarchive.com" -ExternalUrl "https://interntechdarchive.com" -CertificateName "OfficeWebApps Certificate" -EditingEnabled
As you can see, I used the same URLs as discussed during the OOS setup. Also, the -EditingEnabled parameter enables editing in Office Online when it is used together with the SharePoint Server. Parameters
- InternalURL is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the server that runs Office Online Server, such as
https://interntechdarchive.com - ExternalURL is the FQDN that can be accessed on the Internet.
- CertificateName is the friendly name of the certificate.
- EditingEnabled is optional and enables editing in Office Online when used with SharePoint Server. This parameter isn’t used by Skype for Business Server 2015 or Exchange Server because those hosts don’t support editing.
Verify that the Office Online Server farm was created successfully
After the farm is created, details about the farm are displayed in the Microsoft PowerShell prompt as shown above. To verify that Office Online Server is installed and configured correctly, use a web browser to access the Office Online Server discovery URL as shown below. The discovery URL is the InternalUrl parameter you specified when you configured your Office Online Server farm, followed by /hosting/discovery. For example
https://interntechdarchive.com/hosting/discoveryI hope you found this blog post helpful. Please let me know in the comment session if you have any questions.