Search notes:

Microsoft Office Versions

Office version Version id
Office 97 7.0
Office 98 8.0
Office 2000 9.0
Office XP 10.0
Office 2003 11.0
Office 2007 12.0
Office 2010 14.0
Office 2013 15.0
Office 2016 16.0
The short version id is used to locate the relevant Office registry keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office, for example HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0 or HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0
The short version id (but only the first part such as 16) is also used in the file system path C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICEn.
The function get-msOfficeVersion of the PowerShell module MS-Office returns the short office version number.
The short version number 13 was skipped for superstition (i. e. fun) reasons.

Determining version id

Visual Basic for Applications

In VBA, the version id (such as 16.0) is returned by application.version.

PowerShell + Registry

The version id of the installed Office applications can be queried from the registry: they are stored as the default value of the Application's Prog ID.
Because these values are stored in the registry, they can be queried without opening the respective Office application.
Such queries are performed by the following PowerShell script:
forEach ($appId in 'Access', 'Excel', 'Lync', 'OneNote', 'Outlook', 'PowerPoint', 'Publisher', 'Visio', 'Word') {

   $regKey =  "hklm:\Software\Classes\$($appId).application\curVer"

   if (-not (test-path $regKey)) {
     $version = 'n/a'
   }
   else {
      $defaultValue = (get-item $regKey).getValue('')
    #
    # Get number from string that looks like »Excel.Application.16«
    #
      $version =  $defaultValue -replace '.*\.(\d+)', '$1'
   }
   write-output('  {0,-10} {1,3}' -f $appId, $version)
}

Excel Worksheet function

The Excel worksheet function info("release") evaluates to a string like 16.0 which corresponds to the release number of the current Office installation.

2010

2013

Office 2013 introduced Click-to-Run as an alternative to installing Office with the Windows Installer (MSI) technology.

2016

2019

Beginning with Office 2019, Office cannot be installed with MSI anymore, only Click-to-Run will be available.
Nevertheless, Office 2019 is a perpetually-licensed product similar to previous versions that receives regular security updates - yet no new features.

See also

The version number of MS Access can be queried with VBA:
debug.print sysCmd(acSysCmdAccessVer)

Index