Easy Steps to Install Odoo 16 on Windows: A Comprehensive Guide

Odoo is an open-source ERP software that offers a comprehensive suite of business applications to assist businesses in effectively managing their operations. The software has grown in popularity in recent years, and the most recent version, Odoo v16, includes several new features and enhancements. If you’re a Windows user looking to install Odoo v16, you’ve come to the right place. This blog will walk you through the process of installing Odoo v16 in Windows.

How to Install Odoo 16 on Windows:

Steps

Depending on the intended use case, there are numerous ways to install Odoo.  This blog makes an effort to clarify the major portion of the installation options.

• Install Odoo 16 on Windows: Online

Online instances allow you to explore the Odoo world with ease and convenience. These shared instances are intended to give you a quick and easy overview of the Odoo platform. Odoo Online offers private instances and is initially free. It can be used to discover and test Odoo as well as perform non-code customizations.

• Install Odoo 16 on Windows: Using Packaged Installers

Odoo provides easy-to-use installation options for both the Community and Enterprise versions of our software. Packaged installers are available for Windows, Debian, and Ubuntu-based distributions, as well as Fedora, CentOS, and RHEL-based distributions.

The Community version’s packaged installers automatically install all required dependencies, making the installation process simple. Both the Community and Enterprise packages are available for download from Odoo’s download page. Please keep in mind that downloading the Enterprise packages requires you to be a paying customer or partner and to be logged in.

• • Download the installer (Community only) from Odoo’s nightly server or the Windows installer from the download page of Odoo(any edition).
  • Run the downloaded file.
  • Warning: You may see a warning titled “Windows protected your PC” on Windows 8 and later. Click More Info, followed by Run Anyway.
  • Accept the UAC prompt.
  • Follow the installation instructions.
  • Odoo will be launched automatically at the end of the installation.

Install Odoo 16 on Windows:

Source Installation

Odoo’s “source installation” involves running the software directly from its source code rather than installing it. This method is especially advantageous for Odoo module developers because the source code is more readily available than with packaged installations. 

Source Installation benefits 

• • Source installation involves more flexibility and easy debugging options.
  • Explicit control over starting and stopping the software. 
  • Allows changes to settings to be made using command-line parameters without requiring changes to configuration files.
  • Source installation allows you to run multiple versions of Odoo at the same time.

Source Installation: Steps

• • Acquire the sources

• • Download and Install Python

Odoo is built on top of the Python programming language, so you need to install Python on your Windows machine. You can download the latest version of Python from the official website (https://www.python.org/downloads/). Once the download is complete, run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to install Python on your machine. Make sure to add Python to your system path (environment variable)  during the installation process. Odoo runs on Python 3.7 or later.

• • Create a new PostgreSQL user

Odoo relies on PostgreSQL as its database management system, therefore, it is necessary to download and install PostgreSQL with a supported version of 12.0 and later. By default, the only user available in PostgreSQL is postgres, but connecting as postgres is not allowed in Odoo. Therefore, you need to create a new PostgreSQL user.

To do this, you will need to add PostgreSQL’s bin directory (which is typically located in C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL<version>\bin) to your PATH in the environment variable. 

 Create a new PostgreSQL user with a password by following these steps:

• Open pgAdmin.
• Double-click the server to establish a connection.
• Select Object ‣ Create ‣ Login/Group Role.
• Enter the desired username in the Role Name field (such as odoo).
• Go to the Definition tab and input the password (e.g. odoo), then click Save.
• Navigate to the Privileges tab and set Can login? and Create database? to Yes. Adding these privileges makes the database user, equivalent to the administrator.
• These steps will allow you to create a new PostgreSQL user with the necessary privileges to use Odoo.
• • Dependencies

To prepare for the installation of Odoo dependencies, first, you need to download and install Build Tools for Visual Studio. In the Workloads tab, choose C++ build tools when prompted and proceed with the installation. All the required dependencies for Odoo can be found in the requirements.txt file, which is located in the Odoo community directory’s root.

A helpful tip is to avoid combining Python module packages across multiple Odoo instances or with the system. To achieve this, you can create isolated Python environments using virtualenv.

Navigate to the path of your Odoo Community installation (CommunityPath) and run pip in a terminal with Administrator privileges on the requirements file:

C:\> cd \CommunityPath

C:\> pip install setuptools wheel

C:\> pip install -r requirements.txt

The package rtlcss is required for languages with a right-to-left interface:

First, you need to download and install Node.js. Once you have Node.js installed, you can proceed to install rtlcss by running the command “npm install -g rtlcss” in your terminal.

After installing rtlcss, you should add the folder where the rtlcss.cmd file is located in your System Environment’s PATH variable. Typically, this folder is located at C:\Users<user>\AppData\Roaming\npm.

Important Note: In version 0.12.5, wkhtmltopdf is not installed via pip and must be installed manually in order to support headers and footers. More information on the various versions can be found here.

• • Running Odoo

After setting up all the necessary dependencies, you can launch Odoo by executing the odoo-bin command-line interface of the server, which can be found at the root of the Odoo Community directory.

To configure the server, you have two options: you can either provide command-line arguments or use a configuration file.

It’s worth noting that if you’re using the Enterprise edition, you’ll need to add the path to the enterprise addons to the addons-path argument. Also, make sure that the enterprise addons- path is listed before any other paths in addons-path to ensure that the addons are loaded correctly. Commonly required configurations are

• Username and password for PostgreSQL.
• Custom addon paths are available in addition to the defaults addons and enterprise addons (if using), allowing you to load your own modules.

Server configuration:

C:\>cd CommunityPath/

C:\> python odoo-bin -r dbuser -w dbpassword –addons-path=addons -d mydb

The path for the Odoo Community installation is referred to as CommunityPath, while dbuser denotes the PostgreSQL login, dbpassword represents the PostgreSQL password, and mydb refers to the name of the PostgreSQL database.

Once the server starts and displays the message “odoo.modules.loading: Modules loaded“, you can access your Odoo database by opening http://localhost:8069 on your web browser and logging in using the base administrator account with “admin” as both Email and Password. After logging in, you can create and manage new users. Note that the user account used to access the Odoo web interface is distinct from the “–db_user” command line interface argument.

That’s it! You have successfully installed Odoo v16 on your Windows using source installation.

Install Odoo 16 on Windows: Docker

   To install Odoo on Windows using Docker, you can follow these steps:

• • Install Docker Desktop for Windows: Download and install the Docker Desktop for Windows from the Docker website.
  • Create a new directory: Create a new directory on your local machine where you will store the Odoo configuration files and database. For example, you can create a directory named “odoo” on your C:\ drive.
  • Create a configuration file: Create a new file named “odoo.conf” inside the “odoo” directory you created earlier. This file will contain the configuration settings for your Odoo instance. You can use the following template to get started:

                    [options]

                    addons_path = /mnt/extra-addons

                    data_dir = /mnt/odoo-data

• • Download the Odoo image: Open the Command Prompt or PowerShell and run the following command to download the Odoo image:

                    docker pull odoo:latest

• • Start the Odoo container: Run the following command to start the Odoo container:
  • docker run -p 8069:8069 –name odoo –mount type=bind,source=C:\odoo,target=/mnt/extra-addons –mount type=bind,source=C:\odoo,target=/mnt/odoo-data -d odoo:latest

                    This command will start the Odoo container and bind port 8069 to your local machine. It will                         also mount the “odoo” directory you created earlier as the location for the Odoo addons and                             database files.

• • Access Odoo: Once the container is up and running, you can access Odoo by opening your web browser and navigating to http://localhost:8069. You should see the Odoo login page.

                     That’s it! You have now successfully installed Odoo on your Windows machine using Docker.

Wrapping Up

Finally, installing Odoo v16 on Windows can be accomplished in a variety of ways. This blog post detailed the steps for installing Odoo v16 on Windows, including online, packaged, and source installations. The installation guide also covered important aspects of the process, such as creating a PostgreSQL user and installing the required dependencies. Windows users can successfully install Odoo v16 and begin leveraging its comprehensive suite of business applications to streamline their business operations by following the steps outlined in this guide.

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