Install Visio volume license alongside Office 365

At my company we get a certain number of seats of Visio volume license from our Microsoft Partner benefits, but it is not a subscription product and the volume key cannot be simply entered to activate Visio, because our Office 365 is installed as O365ProPlusRetail.

Here I’ll describe how to install the Visio volume license product side-by-side with our standard installation of Office 365, which is a supported scenario according to this Microsoft doc.

At first I had problems where installing the product “VisioPro2019Volume” would downgrade my O365 build to the 1808 version. I posted a comment on this Microsoft Docs issue because it seemed related, and received a very helpful reply from Martin with another Microsoft Docs page describing how to build lean and dynamic install packages for O365. This was the key to configuring my XML file for proper side-by-side installation.

I also used the super helpful Office Customization Tool in support of figuring this out.

Procedure

1. 1. Download the Office Deployment Tool
   2. Install the tool to a folder on your workstation. Create a new XML file named “newvisio.xml” to look like this (update the PIDKEY value)

<Configuration ID="6659a04f-037d-4f23-b8a2-64c851090a5e">
  <Add Version="MatchInstalled">
    <Product ID="VisioPro2019Volume" PIDKEY="insert Key">
      <Language ID="MatchInstalled" TargetProduct="O365ProPlusRetail" />
    </Product>
  </Add>
</Configuration>

1. Note: You can get the Key from the Partner portal (go into MPN ? Benefits ? Software) and enter it into your xml file
2. If you have Visio installed already as part of O365, you will need to remove it:
   1. 1. Create yourself a configuration xml file named removevisio.xml:

   <Configuration ID="ba49a53d-04c0-44a6-b591-c099d9c4e6ed">
     <Remove OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Monthly">
       <Product ID="VisioProRetail">
         <Language ID="en-us" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Access" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Excel" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="OneDrive" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="OneNote" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Outlook" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="PowerPoint" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Publisher" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Teams" />
         <ExcludeApp ID="Word" />
       </Product>
     </Remove>
     <Display Level="Full" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
   </Configuration>
   

   1. Place this file where the deployment tool was downloaded, and then run it:

   2. setup /configure removevisio.xml

   3. The uninstall will proceed. You’ll see an image like this; don’t be alarmed its not removing all of office if you set your XML properly
3. Once the previous version uninstall is complete, install with this command:

4. setup /configure newvisio.xml

5. Now you should have Office 365 on subscription, but Visio on Volume License.