The Sysadmins

Deploying Office 2010 Custom Ribbons and Settings via Group Policy. This post will detail the process of pushing UI changes out to your Office 2010 clients. It will cover default fonts, margins and changes to the ribbon. I couldn’t find a great deal of information on this subject when I first looked, so hopefully this will help those struggling to find a solution.
 
Custom Ribbons

Configurations made to the ribbon in Office 2010 are stored in .officeUI files, these aren’t created until you modify the default ribbon. Start with a vanilla office install and make the desired changes in the applications you use. Once completed, head over to 'C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office' where you should find the newly created .officeUI files. For a full list of officeui files and their descriptions click here (from Microsoft). For the purpose of deploying these changes via group policy you will want to copy these up to a share that as accessible to all users.

Default Font, Size and Margins in Word

These are stored in the normal.dotm (previously normal.dot in Office 2003). Open word and make your changes, close word and head to 'C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates'. There is one caveat with this, when you first open word it will rename the normal.dotm and create a new template. So you may want to separate the Word section of the script below and reapply the following day. For the purpose of deploying these changes via group policy you will want to copy normal.dotm up to a share that as accessible to all users.
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A guide to deploying Office 2010 via group policy. There are two parts so a successful deployment. Firstly creating your configuration (.msp) file and secondly a simple batch file to install.

 

Microsoft Office customization tool

Microsoft Office customization tool allows you to edit the default configuration to suite your install requirements.

To load the office customization tool, you will need a copy of the full office 2010 install. Head to the command prompt and from within the same directory as the setup.exe type setup.exe /admin. You will be greeted with the welcome page which outlines what the tool can be used for. Move down the list and see which sections are applicable to your needs.

To point out a few of the more useful entries.
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