OFF97: Using Windows System Policies With Office 97

The following article describes using Windows System Policies with Microsoft Office 97.

Windows System Policies offer the following advantages when used with Office 97:

• Policies can be defined for all users, specific groups of users, or individual users.
  
  
• Policies give the administrators centralized control over these settings so they can be set at one time for all users in the domain or in the group (if group-specific policies are employed), rather than setting these options with login scripts or other mechanisms. This means that administrators are able to set (and update) Office 97 options and preferences easily and efficiently.

An example of a commonly used Office 97 policy is setting the Default Save As type and setting the User and Shared Templates locations.

In Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation 4.0, you can use the Windows System Policy Editor to configure client computers from a central location by creating a single system policy file that resides on a server. When users log on to the network, the client computer uses this file to modify local copies of the Windows registry. The system policy file can be updated at any time.

System policies define the desktop and network functionality on each client computer, including Office features and capabilities. Using system policies, you can perform functions such as disabling peer-sharing services or preventing access to the command prompt for your entire workgroup. Similarly, if you want everyone in your workgroup to save their files in a specific format, such as Word 6.0 for Windows, system policies allow you to set that default file format from a central location.

For more information about types of restrictions and how to implement system policies, see the Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit or the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit and the Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Resource Kit.

The following are some caveats in using policies with Microsoft Office 97.

• System policies are not available for Microsoft Windows NT 3.51.
  
  
• Many of the policy settings for Microsoft Office 97, such as the default Save As, can be overridden or changed under Tools, Options during a specific session that the user is logged on to a workstation. The benefit of using policies in this case is that any settings that the users change will be reset the next time the user logs on to a workstation while logged on to the domain.
  
  NOTE: Office 97 does not recognize expanded string registry variables, such as %username%. Should an administrator need to specify document locations for users to save files or use user templates from their home directory, the home directory should be mapped in the following manner using a login script:
  

       Net use h: \\<server>\%username%
  						

  
  For more information about sharing the %username% directory on the server with the appropriate permissions, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  155449  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155449/EN-US/ ) Batch Process to Create and Grant Access to Home Directories