Problem Override Outlook GPO Settings

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Our work, in their infinite "wisdom" have decided to enable two of the singularly most annoying settings in Outlook:

1) Always check spelling before sending
2) Empty the deleted items folder upon exiting (would be less annoying if it didnt prompt you every time)

Can anyone point me in the direction of the reg keys to override these settings? I tried the below keys but it doesnt seem to be working:

Code:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\Spelling
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools\1.0\Office

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

If the Outlook changes are done via group policy and are enforced, then you'll be at a loss.

Personally, I'd complain to IT and ask them to change the policy.

Although... (not that I'm condoning this) you could use Process Monitor (download it here) to see the changes made to the registry via group policy, which will include registry keys.

You'll need to be a local admin to remove them though.

Qs

 

I am a local admin, so thats fine. I already override another GPO policy that stops me from moving my start menu items around. Another annoying and utterly useless setting. I basically dropped it into a batch file and run it in my startup script, that seems to sort the problem.

Cheers for the Process Monitor link. Will look at that.

 

No probs.

Just remember that dependant upon how the domain's group policy refresh interval is set, you may need to redo the local changes (including your start menu items 'fix').

To change that through regedit you need the following key:-

HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Winlogon\GPExtensions {827D319E-6EAC-11D2-A4EA- 00C04F79F83A}\MaxNoGPOListChangesInterval

It's set in minutes. Default is 960 / 16 hours.

Qs

 

Did that. The (American) team (one of the counterparts to my team) "decided" that thats what they wanted. For every email to be checked in order to prevent misspelled emails from being issued externally (note this isnt a business decision, its an IT decision - by a team that frankly dont know their arse from their elbow).

The response was basically, "tough - we'll review it if enough people complain globally". Since most people have spell checker on by default, and are unlikely to know how to turn it off, I find the odds of that happening rather low. I just dont understand the incessant need to piss the few people who have made the conscious choice to turn it off.

 

Well, its either that or charging 80 grand for a piece of work my team could do for about 5-10. Including 41 days for "Database Development"!!! I could knock the damn thing together in about 3.

 

Question: How do I use ProcMon to see whats being set by the GPO's at startup?

 

Did the American team also set it to English US as the default language for the spellchecker as well?

 

wouldnt put it past them.

I'm all for GPO policies, but when they are as ridiculous as this, i find ways around it.

 

Don't.

Log in, open up Proc Mon and let it scan.

Remove all views bar Registry Activity.

Apply appropriate filters (e.g. Path CONTAINS "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office")

Once you find the GPO registry entry right click it and choose jump to - this will open up regedit where you can disable the relevant entry.


Else, if you know the key that's being changed just do search for it, then right click it, jump to and disable.

Hope that helps mate.

Qs