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.
Excel / Outlook Default Font and Size
Excel and Outlook store the font and size settings in the registry.
Outlook -> [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\MailSettings]
Excel -> [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel]
Make the changes in Outlook / Excel, close the application and open regedit and browse to the keys above. Right click ‘mailsetting’ or ‘Excel’ and select export, this will give you the .reg to import into other machines. For the purpose of deploying these changes via group policy you will want to copy the .reg files up to a share that as accessible to all users.
Which brings us to the script to apply these modifications to a client machine. I would set this as a logon script.
Script
REM Check to see if the .officeUI changes have already been made and exits if so (I was running this on new installs, you can remove this if exist if you aren't)
if exist "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Word.officeUI" goto exit
REM Copies the officeUI which are responsible for setting the ribbon
xcopy "\\server\share\OfficeUI\Word.officeUI" "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\" /Y /I
xcopy "\\server\share\OfficeUI\Excel.officeUI" "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\" /Y /I
xcopy "\\server\share\OfficeUI\olkexplorer.officeUI" "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\" /Y /I
xcopy "\\server\share\OfficeUI\olkmailread.officeUI" "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\" /Y /I
REM Copies over the modified normal.dotm to set margins and fonts
xcopy "\\server\share\OfficeUI\Normal.dotm" "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates" /Y /I
REM Merges the default font registry key for outlook
regedit /s "\\server\share\OfficeUI\OutlookDefaultFont.reg"
REM Merges the default font registry key for excel
regedit /s "\\file1\data\Applic\Microsoft\Office 2010\OfficeUI\ExcelDefaultFont.reg"
:exit
exit
Summary
You can now customize your Office 2010 UI which is a great time saver if you deviate from the default.
April 18, 2012 at 6:38 pm
For Windows 7 the directory needs to be:
c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\
June 5, 2012 at 1:21 pm
It would probably be easiest to just use the “%UserProfile%” system variable.
June 7, 2012 at 9:51 am
If the Client machine already has a different customisation in place how do I merge the customisations or deploy the new one in such a way that Oulook applies the cusomtisation in addition to (rather than in place of) the existing olkexplorer.officeUI?
June 7, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Good question.
There might be scope for appending to the original olkexplorer.officeUI, but it seems kind of messy from a quick play and will leave you with duplicate entries.
This will append the new .officeUI file text to the original olkexplorer.officeui:
From there you will need to remove the following lines, the first line is at the end of the original officeUI file, and the 2nd/3rd are from the start of the appended officeUI. They will be grouped together as below:
This method seemed to work for me, but your mileage may vary depending on the content of your officeUI files.
Let me know how you get on, or if you find a simpler method. Scripting the removal of the text above is probably going to be the hardest part with native Windows tools.
June 21, 2012 at 6:33 pm
I used the excel regedit example perfectly but there is one caveat. The MRU is brought into the users machines. I then cleared out my MRU and exported the new Reg key for Excel. Unfortunately everytime the users logon (I created a logon script via GP Preferences) their MRU is blank. How do I get their to begin rebuilding again?
July 25, 2012 at 4:00 am
Even easier if you for example xcopy
“\\server\share\OfficeUI\Normal.dotm” “C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates” /Y /I
To:
xcopy “\\server\share\OfficeUI\Normal.dotm” “%AppData%\Microsoft\Templates” /Y /I