Microsoft 365 Reset (3.0.0)

A MOFA-parity update to the MDM-agnostic, unified, user-friendly macOS script to repair, reset, or remove Microsoft 365 components

Background

A December 2023 Microsoft 365 Reset (2.0.0b1) via Jamf Pro Self Service post detailed a “quick-and-dirty Jamf Pro Policy hack for testing Microsoft_Office_Reset_2.0.0.pkg” (which still works as advertised today, more than 1,000 days later).

However, while conducting some internal training, I was pained by how user un-friendly the workflow seemed — even if it did get the job done — which motivated the development of the modern, unified approach that Microsoft-365-Reset.zsh now delivers.

Slideshow

Overview

The latest version is always available in the Microsoft-365-Reset repository on GitHub.com.

The Microsoft-365-Reset.zsh script seeks to provide an MDM-agnostic, unified, user-friendly approach to all of Paul’s Office-Reset goodness.

Additionally, one resolution to the nightmare that is the Adobe Acrobat Add-in Removal for Microsoft 365 is also included.

Under-the-hood

The script consolidates the expanded package workflows into one easy-to-use tool with:

• Interactive swiftDialog UI in self-service, test, and debug modes
• Non-interactive execution in silent mode
• Dependency-aware operation resolution
• Deterministic execution order
• Shared logging and exit codes for automation
• Auto-repair for selected Microsoft apps using Microsoft-hosted packages
• MOFA community-maintained reset script contents adapted into the unified workflow

MOFA Parity

The MOFA Community scripts are built upon the original Office-Reset.com tools, ensuring they remain up-to-date, reliable, and continuously improved. 

• MOFA alignment:
  • Separate reset_license and reset_credentials operations align with MOFA’s separate license-only and broader sign-in reset flows
  • App repair/reinstall flows for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote stop after repair without continuing into configuration cleanup, matching current MOFA behavior
  • Teams background preservation (destination folders created in the console user’s context), TCC reset, and retention of a valid current Teams app bundle align with current MOFA behavior
  • remove_office removes only the Office-owned children of /Library/Application Support/Microsoft (MAU2.0, MERP2.0, Office365) and no longer forgets the Defender (com.microsoft.wdav) package receipt, matching current MOFA Office Removal; like MOFA, it still removes /Library/Logs/Microsoft and ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft
  • reset_onenote keeps the OneNote container (~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.mac), which holds the local sync cache, matching current MOFA behavior; only remove_onenote_data removes it
  • Reset operations ask Microsoft apps to quit (SIGTERM), wait 2 seconds (3 for reset_factory) only when something was running, then force-quit (SIGKILL) anything left; reset_powerpoint and removal operations force-quit immediately, matching current MOFA behavior
  • remove_office, remove_outlook_data, remove_skypeforbusiness, remove_webexpt, and remove_zoomplugin flush cached preferences before deleting preference files, matching current MOFA behavior; the flush is limited to the console user and root
  • remove_zoomplugin targets the paths Zoom’s ZoomMacOutlookPlugin.pkg installs, matching current MOFA Zoom Plugin Removal
• Intentional divergences from current MOFA behavior:
  • reset_factory directly performs MOFA-aligned suite cleanup and intentionally adds package-era dependency expansion; it archives classic Teams backgrounds before cleanup and requires destructive confirmation in interactive modes because it deletes the Office group container, including local Outlook data
  • Reset operations leave profile-delivered /Library/Managed Preferences files in place; MOFA’s Word, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, and Teams resets remove that app’s managed preference files. Only remove_office removes them here
  • reset_teams suppresses Screen Recording settings in silent mode, preserves classic and work-or-school Teams bundles during a standard reset, does not install current Teams when its main app bundle is absent, and stops before cleanup when Teams backgrounds cannot be archived or staged (backgrounds under a symlinked parent directory are skipped with a WARNING and cleanup continues); backgrounds are archived, staged in the console user’s home folder, and restored as the console user instead of in a fixed /tmp path
  • AutoUpdate registration treats new Teams as the current TEAMS21 product while keeping classic Teams on the legacy product ID
  • remove_zoomplugin and remove_skypeforbusiness do not remove Dock entries; MOFA uses a bundled dockutil, and this repo adds no third-party dependency
  • remove_webexpt stops WebEx Productivity Tools processes by install path, and webexmta by exact name, instead of MOFA’s bare pluginagent pattern, so other vendors’ plugin agents keep running
  • remove_defender, remove_zoomplugin, and remove_webexpt run a vendor uninstaller only when it and every parent directory are root-owned and not writable by non-admin users; MOFA runs any executable uninstaller it finds
  • Auto-repair logs a WARNING and relies on the Microsoft signature check when the server reports no Content-Length for a package; MOFA fails the repair instead. A reported size that does not match the download still fails the repair
• Repo-local operations without current MOFA community-script equivalents:
  • reset_teams_force is a repo-local operation ID that exposes the force-reinstall behavior available through MOFA Teams reset’s INSTALL=force argument; MOFA does not provide a separate force-reset script
  • remove_acrobat_addin remains a repo-local workflow without a current MOFA community-script equivalent

What’s New

3.0.0

⚠️ Breaking Change: ⚠️  

• reset_onenote (and therefore reset_factory) no longer deletes the OneNote container (~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.mac), which holds the local sync cache, including notes not yet synced to the cloud; MOFA and the package-era workflow both keep it
  • add remove_onenote_data — which requires destructive confirmation in interactive modes — to any policy that relied on the old behavior

Highlights:

• Reviewed MOFA community-script pull requests #26–#41 (merged 21-Oct-2026) against the unified workflow
• reset_factory now requires the destructive-action confirmation in interactive modes (silent is unchanged), because it deletes the Office group container (~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office), including local Outlook data, Office templates, and custom dictionaries
• Reset operations now ask apps to quit (SIGTERM), wait briefly only when something was running, then force-quit (SIGKILL) anything left
• Keychain cleanup now reaches the console user’s login keychain when root’s HOME is not the console user’s home folder (for example, a management agent running with HOME=/var/root); previously, sign-in items could be silently left in place
• remove_office, remove_outlook_data, remove_skypeforbusiness, remove_webexpt, and remove_zoomplugin now cover additional MOFA-aligned paths and flush cached preferences before deleting preference files
• Keychain items that remain after repeated deletion now fail the operation (exit 20)
• See CHANGELOG.md for complete details

Support

Best-effort support is available on the Mac Admins Slack (free, registration required) — sans a dedicated channel for this script — or you can open an issue (after reviewing the README.md).