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On a relative's laptop I had selected custom installation for Office and installed only Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Recently I was doing some spring-cleaning and noticed that Windows Update (which is set to provide updates for all installed Microsoft products) is offering updates for Office apps that are not even installed! Take a look at a snippet of the update list below:

Office 2010 Updates

What do any of these have to do with the 3 installed apps?

BTW, I found a similar question here, but I already know how to hide the updates and the same ones are never offered to me again, so that's not the issue here. What I want to know is, does anyone know why Windows Update thinks these updates might be required? I searched the laptop for files mentioned in the KB pages for the updates, and couldn't locate them anywhere. Should I still install the security updates at least, or are they just being offered by mistake and is it fine to hide them?

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    Although you only opted to install certain Office products, the foundation for all products gets installed anyway, so windows updates detects this and offers updates for them. This annoys me also.
    – Moab
    Oct 10, 2012 at 17:22
  • "so windows updates detects this" - Even though the files to be updated/replaced do not even exist on the system in the first place? Also, I just checked, and the version of Office 2010 I installed (Home and Student) does not even include Outlook, Publisher, InfoPath, Project, SharePoint Workspace and the like for which updates are being offered! @Moab
    – Karan
    Oct 10, 2012 at 17:42
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    I know, it makes no sense, only in the mind of Microsoft.
    – Moab
    Oct 10, 2012 at 18:37
  • @Karan- This was asked two years ago and answered in the comments. It still shows up as an unanswered question, which wastes time for people volunteering to address old questions that have never received an answer. Could you answer your question and accept it so it gets treated as closed?
    – fixer1234
    Oct 4, 2014 at 7:01
  • @fixer1234: Still not clear to me why updates are offered for programs not even included in my edition of Office. Why would the foundation for products from other editions be installed? No satisfactory answer yet, although I guess only MS can answer this so perhaps I should get rid of the question altogether. :/
    – Karan
    Apr 5, 2015 at 2:39

1 Answer 1

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Office updates install all relevant updates for your edition of Office, not just the components you chose to install, so that should you choose to re-run Office setup at a later time and select components you had previously de-selected, they will automatically be up-to-date.

Using your screenshot as an example, if you decide that you need OneNote after all, you can simply re-run Office setup and select OneNote. OneNote will be installed and you'll find KB2553290 and KB2589345 automatically applied because they were previously installed via Microsoft Update.

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  • See my comment above. My version of Office doesn't even include programs for which I'm being offered updates.
    – Karan
    Apr 5, 2015 at 2:35

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