Installing Office 365 on a different Hard drive from Windows. i.e. Not on Drive C: (to save space the approx 3GB space used)

Question

This question was asked many years ago, in the old Forum, and some of the answers given appear to be out of date.
However, towards the end of the thread what seems to me to be the best two answers are given.
See Previous thread installing-office-365-on-a-different-hard-drive-to-that-of-the-windows-installation
One is to use Drive Management to insert a volume from another drive into a directory. So in this case I suppose on your "Other SSD" you would set up a partition big enough to hold Office - so maybe 3GB - then in Drive Management you assign that volume to replace the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office” directory.
The other method proposed in the last post in the thread is to use mlinks to point that office directory at a directory on your other SSD drive.
(It seems too be acknowledged that the first answer given at the begining of the thread, messing with the Registry, is not the best way and I think the registry keys given in some answers are out of date.)
I first encountered mlinks in the description of a utility for switching on and switching off add-ons for MS Flight Simulator. So I recognise it’s a very useful tool to get to grips with.
So, my questions are:
(1) Is this still necessary in order to save space on drive C. i.e no option given to change install directory.
(2) Which of these methods is best - or maybe what are the advantages and disadvantages of each.

My gut feeling is that getting to grips with using Mlinks is the way to go as this is potentially far more efficient and straightforward. For example one could go on to move the Outlook ".ost" files off drive C:.

Answer

This is a worrying trend from Microsoft. Microsoft deliberately neglects the user rights to install their software on another drive location because they want you use use up your SSD local storage to incentivize the use Microsoft One Drive cloud storage. This is so malicious. Please Microsoft, listen to your users needs or you'll have more and more users switching to open source alternatives like OpenOffice.

Answer

There seems to be a trend for the system to be too "Smart" to make decision for us. But it boils down to UX designer really haven't considered a sizable minority has the SSD + HDD option where they didn't have a very big SSD because of the time they bought the PC/Laptop. There are workarounds that you have to go into safemode as those background processes are unloaded, move the folder to d driver and create a symbolic link, you almost have to do it for every software like this (there are ones that automatically install to appdata too). I have also tried to move the whole [program files] to another drive (you need to change NTFS ownership of windows store folder to successfully move it), but it will break Microsoft store apps (even calc), and after moving it will show "this system is not configured to use the software"(not the exact word, but something like that), but works for other software like Adobe CC suite, autodesk fusion360 (so that you don't have to reboot, move symbolic link every time you install a software).

I don't think it's even about one drive either, as the problem when having like 128G/256G SSD for system drive (with recovery + reserved, space left is even less) is that somehow by design a lot of large software, even you select data drive to install, it will put a very large amount of file (likely shared library, etc.) onto c drive, there's no amount of one drive that can solve the problem. It's just UX design team haven't thoughtfully gone through all the use case. As microsoft constantly collects data, it will be trivially easy for microsoft to profile which files and folders must remain on SSD to have a fast boot and load time and mount individual SSD chunks to the bigger HDD only for those essential files, that's transparent to the user (user only sees the larger HDD, the mapping happens in background). But at 2022, there will be no incentive to solve the problem as that specific era technology of small SSD+HDD is mostly phasing out (now you at least get a 512 SSD + 1THDD, where SSD space is no longer a problem)

But, still, in win11, even if you choose install all apps into d in settings, office 365 still think it is entitled to install on C drive, which goes against the principle of human-centered design.

And yes, I had to switch to libreoffice for my laptop, and just use the web version for school when my peer wants shared editing (which is pretty limited in function).

Answer

Despite the blase comments, the way around this - at least for Office 365 on Win 10 - was easy for me - if left unrevealed by supposed experts.

Instead of choosing the first presented "Office Default" versions, go all the way to the bottom. There you'll find "Offline Installation":

Windows Workaround highlight

I was able to save it to my D: drive and install it successfully. While C2R may have been developed with the best of intentions, whoever claims the current version with no way to designate a destination can go format an aardvark.

Answer

Hi,

Microsoft uses Click-to-Run to download and install Office products. C2R doesn’t support choose installation path so Office is installed in C drive by default.

There are indeed ways to change install directory found by users. But we don’t recommend to do so and neither provide these ways for our customers.

Personally, I’d rather use method one because I’m uncomfortable with using third party products to fiddle with my Microsoft products. But we can always choose the one we preferred. If there is a need to install Office in other drives, choose the method we like.

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Answer

After looking online for this answer and unable to find it myself I thought I would present it here. Worked immediately on my Windows 10 Machine with no issue.

Navigate here in your registry

"Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration" and locate the "InstallationPath" key. Change the location to the desired folder and proceed with running installer.

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Installing Office 365 on a different Hard drive from Windows. i.e. Not on Drive C: (to save space the approx 3GB space used)

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