Perform Office Online Server Update via Windows Updates

In this article, we will show you how to Perform Office Online Server Update via Windows Updates. Instead of downloading updates via the Microsoft Update catalog as described here “how to perform Office Online Server Update via the Microsoft Update Catalog“. We will have to apply Windows updates via the Windows Settings as released via WSUS. The update steps are the same other than the medium the update is delivered. Please see upgrade Microsoft Office 2019 to 2021 on Mac.

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What to note before applying Windows Update

I will advise you to take a backup of your server or snapshot. Also, you could save the configuration file if you wish by using the command below.

As part of the update process. You’ll have to re-create the Office Online Server farm. To re-create the Office Online Server farm. Review your current Office Online Server farm properties by running the Microsoft PowerShell cmdlet below and review the parameters for New-OfficeWebAppsFarm.

Get-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.

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Remove the Office Online Farm

Applying Office Online Server updates to upgrading to a newer version 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.

To remove the farm, please run the command below. The get-officewebappsfarm command shows we have correctly removed the online server farm.

Remove-OfficeWebAppsMachine

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. After you have reinstalled, you will have to apply the update in the following way described below

If you do not want this heartache/headache, please remove the office online farm before proceeding with the step to apply Windows updates.

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Apply Office Online Server Updates

Now that the updates have been released by WSUS, it is available to the operating system. All you need to do is click Install Now as shown below.

When prompted to restart, please restart.

As you can see, the updates we have successfully installed the updates for Office online etc.

Re-create the server farm

Now that we have installed the updates, it is time to recreate the server farm as mentioned above.

Since we are deploying a single Office Online Server farm that uses HTTPS, we will run the following command below.

New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl "yourURL" -ExternalUrl "yourURL" -CertificateName "YourCertificateThumprint" -EditingEnabled

As you can see, the Office Web App Farm has been recreated.

Here is how to apply software updates to multiple server farms. See the steps on how to set up and Configure Office Online Server, and How to Troubleshoot Unable to Install Office.

Verify the Successful creation of the farm

To do this, access the Office Online Server discovery URL through a web browser. This is the discovery URL is the InternalUrl parameter you specified when you configured your Office Online Server farm, followed by /hosting/discovery. For example

URL/hosting/discovery

I hope you found this article useful on how to “Perform Office Online Server Update via Windows Updates”. Please feel free to leave a comment below.