Delete Microsoft AutoUpdate on an iMac

2dkings wrote:

I appreciate the thoughts here. However I only see LaunchAgents folder. Not the others anywhere. Nothing inside of LaunchAgents that seem possible. Bummer that!

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/584efb7b-d995-4d27-b538-f78a193d5feb

You will need to follow the instructions the I supplied in my post to view the other folders. Everyone has those 3 folders that include launch processes. The link provided by lkrupp would contain that actual app used for the update, but you are still going to want to delete the launch process from one of these 3 folders that points to that app in the Application Support folder.

'/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft AutoUpdate.app'

I don’t know why you don’t have the Microsoft AutoUpdate app, but you may be able to achieve the same results in a different way by turning off various Microsoft notifications in the “Notifications" section of "System Preferences”.

Good luck.

2dkings wrote:

The Microsoft AutoUpdate remains as a nuisance. Does anyone have a solution?

You have three folders where launch process are installed by software. Go to Finder > Go > Go to Folder and paste each of these locations there. Don't forget the ~ character in the last one.

/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/LaunchAgents

~/Library/LaunchAgents

There will be one in there that you should be able to identify as a Microsoft updater process that will launch the app in your Application Support folder, probably in the Microsoft AU Daemon folder, seen in the screenshot. Remove the process from your Launch Folder and it will no longer run the app in your Application Support folder. Post a screenshot of those 3 folders if you need help identifying the correct file to delete.

It appears you are running Monterey (12.7). Office 365 apps are no longer updated on Monterey.

I suspect that if you check (enable) "Automatically keep Microsoft apps up to date" that MS AutoUpdate will just stop notifying you ... because there aren't any updates available for Monterey unless you never updated to 16.89.1, which was the final Office 365 update on Monterey.

It could be a mistake to just remove MS Autoupdate due to its integration with the MS 365 apps. Better just to disable it. In Monterey that's done in System Preferences > Users & Groups > (User account) > Login Items. If you have more than one user account on the Mac, you may need to disable it in each account.

I have had trouble disabling the MS Auto Update as well. I know I unchecked it in the app and thought I had also deleted the Launch Agent & Launch Daemon for it as well. Just the other day I deleted auto update .plist file from both (this was suggested by @Mac Jim ID):

/Library/LaunchAgents/
/Library/LaunchDaemons/

So we'll see if that does it this time.