How to Enable Office Insider in Microsoft Office 365 Applications

Instead of installing Office Insider for your users, you can give them the option to select which Office Insider channel they want to use on their Windows devices.

Use a registry command to install Office Insider

If you have an existing Office installation on a Windows device, the simplest way to install Office Insider is to run a command that updates the registry on the device. The command will update information in the registry to specify which Office Insider channel the Office installation should use.

1. On a Windows device, you can run a “reg add” command from an elevated Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell.

reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common /v insiderslabbehavior /t REG_DWORD /d 1

The operation completed successfully.

# Output
The operation completed successfully.

2. Open any Office app | File | Account then click Join Insider Program.

Along with Office Insider channels, you can also include other channels for them to select, such as Current Channel or Monthly Enterprise Channel.

reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officechannelexposure /v insiderfast /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officechannelexposure /v firstreleasecurrent /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officechannelexposure /v current /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officechannelexposure /v monthlyenterprise /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Use Group Policy to install Office Insider

If you’re already using Group Policy to manage Office in your organization, you can use it to configure Windows devices to get Office Insider.

For existing Office installations on Windows devices, you can change to Office Insider by setting the Update Channel policy to Enabled. In the Group Policy Management Console, you can find the Update Channel policy in the following location:

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine)\Updates

When you set the policy to Enabled, you’ll see the option to choose Current Channel (Preview) or Beta Channel from the drop-down list under Options. The policy applies to devices, not to users. So if multiple users are using Office on that device, each user will get that Office Insider channel.