skype for business

[KK20]

The latest round of updates has replaced lync with Skype for business. We didn't use lync but rather helpfully it wasn't disabled in the original office rollout - it simply lay dormant but invisible to users. Skype for business now launches various screens on logon. Is there a way to disable Skype for business via GPO/registry? I don't want to "reinstall" office removing Skype for business (or lync? not sure how that will work in the OCT now, I assume the update simply upgrades lync afterwards).

 

thanks

[Harlquinth]

We've also just noticed this whilst preparing new images for the summer updates and discovering Skype had somehow appeared on them.

 

Lync is marked as 'not available' and 'hidden' in our custom install of office 2013, however for some reason, updates seem to install/reinstall Lync, and then it gets upgraded to Skype, which is visible to all users, so slightly frustrating that Microsoft seems to be overriding our install options!

 

I'd assumed the best way of uninstalling skype/lync would be to find the relevant updates and uninstall them, however we've just tried that on one affected machine/image by uninstalling the lync updates it had, and skype is still there! Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

Thanks, Peter.

[Harlquinth]

After reading a bit more about it, apparently you're ment to uninstall by changing the office 2013 install options, and removing/unticking 'lync'.

 

We don't seem to have that option though (perhaps because we never set lync to install in the first place?). Currently trying a complete uninstall of office 2013 to see if that gets rid of it....

[Michael]

Not sure if it's relevant, however Microsoft are now deploying Skype 7.3 or 7.4 (top of my head) via Microsoft Update.

[Harlquinth]

I've seen that for a while, and we normally just hide that update - skype for business seems to show up as an office update though, which is how we missed it.

 

Uninstalling office completely does seem to get rid of it, not very good that you have to do a complete uninstall though.

 

Thanks, Peter.