Software Deployment

That's an empty template of the config.xml? Maybe start with removing the bold parts of the properties you want to use and don't forget to fill in the correct values (italic parts)

<!-- <OptionState Id="OptionID" State="absent" Children="force" /> -->


You might want to read this page as well: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179195.aspx

The template contains default settings expect from the changes done to the first and eleventh line. I tried to remove the bold parts (!) from one or several lines but when trying to launch the installation a message appears saying that the config.xml is not valid. "Run Setup again without using a Setup configuration file, or fix the configuration file".

ProofingTools should be an OptionId and not the Product. The product is your Office version, like Enterprise, ProPlus, etc...

I really recommend you read every chapter on the following website to understand what you are doing: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179099.aspx

Basically anything you need to know to get a working config.xml is explained there. So read it carefully, modify the config.xml after that and if it still doesn't work, post your new config.xml again. I'd gladly help you then, but to be honest, at the moment it doesn't look like you put any effort in really understanding how the config.xml works.

As more and more companies move to this kind of setup - an EXE stub and an XML configuration file, learning about how XML files are formatted would be useful, too.