Microsoft has announced in 2019 that they will completely discontinue Skype for Business until July 2021, replacing it by Teams once and for all (Read about it here). While this is probably great news for almost everyone, this can tunr into a big headache for many network administrators and support analysts out there.
Although Microsoft has its plans well defined, there is still no news of an official tool for removing Skype for Business in a silent, automated way, in bulk and without harming the other applications in the Office365 package.
I was asked in my company to then develop an automated silent way to remove skype, considering that I should complete this in the best possible way, covering both 32 and 64 bit versions.
After a lot of research on the internet, I could not find anything that was ready to go. If it exists it hasn’t been shared (yet), and that’s why I decided to get some hands on and get this done. Since I was successful I then decided to share my solution to help other colleagues.
Obs: I’ve tested this method inside my environment, using the latest Office365 x86 and x64 installs. If you want to test in your own environment, I suggest you do it on a testing machine or VM first to see how the script will behave in your reality. I will not be held responsible for unexpected or inappropriate results to the outcome of your trials.
Step 1:
Download the zipped folder with the necessary files here.
Step 2:
Copy the zipped folder over to the test machine and extract it. Then just double-click on the UninstallSkype.bat file present in that folder and wait for the removal to run. A command prompt window will open but all other commands will be running silently.
Suggestion:
You can encapsulate the files to run in SCCM, logon script, GPO, PSExec, etc. You just need to have the ability to adapt the script and tools to the reality of your environment.
That is all, I’ve shared everything the easiest and best way that I could think of, I hope this was helpfull to you.
Cheers!