Microsoft started to recommend its 64bit edition of Office 365 pro plus to be installed as the default Office installation. While at first many people think this is a bad idea due to all add-ins I did the switch last weekend and it was a very smooth and friction free experience.
Till April 2019 you had to manually uninstall the 32bit version of Office first and than install the 64bit version. If you are deploying Office 365 pro plus through the Office 365 Deployment toolkit you can now automate this experience and add a new switch to your config file.
Requirements to do this:
- At least Version 1902 of Office 365 ProPlus installed on the device that you want to change.
- At least version 16.0.11615.33602 of the Office Deployment Tool from the Microsoft Download Center.
- A location that contains all the product and language files for the architecture that you are changing the installation to.
So if you meet that requirement you can simply add that switch to your configuration.xml file:
MigrateArch="TRUE"
In my case my configuration.xml file looks like that (disclaimer: I am running the Office Insider builds, if you don't want to do that you need to replace that section.
For me it was a very nice experience and perfect thing to do during Easter Holidays!