Visual Studio 2012/2013 Express offline installation/activation
You can get offline installers for VS2013 Express easily from MS (example), but the Express versions require an Internet connection to re-activate every so often to extend the "trial" mode they run in.
The purchased versions (Std, Pro, etc.) don't.
I can't find any definitive MS sources to confirm this right now, but see this thread and this thread over on Social.MSDN where they say similar:
I've just been on the phone to MPN and MSDN (back and forth a few times) and eventually the MPN guy told me he'd found some internal emails which indicate the new MPN licensing model for Visual Studio 2013 requires you to sign-in every 30 days (or 90 days?) to keep the product active. Apparently signing out and in will extend the "trial period" by a further 90 days each time you do it, for as long as you have a current MPN/MSDN subscription.
For at least Visual Studio 2015 & 2017 (Preview) Express which would be the current choices for most:
- Create a Visual Studio offline installation package with for example these flags:
vs_community.exe --layout e:\vs2017offline --lang en-US - Copy the installation folder to the offline computer
- Install the certificates from the Certificates subfolder! (with admin rights - to local machine - no password)
- Activate Visual Studio Express on a computer that has access to internet.
- Copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VSCommon\OnlineLicensing from that computer to the offline computer (actually I tested by copying the whole VSCommon folder).
More detailed installation instructions
For the activation part I'm echoing this answer.
Tested this on both VS 2015 & 2017 Preview. Haven't tested it on 2012/2013 though.