Deploying custom Microsoft Word 2010 registry settings at logon

In december I added a blog post entited "Deploying custom Microsoft Word 2007 registry settings at logon" in which I detailed how to select, export and apply custom advanced settings for Word 2007. Since then I have moved to Office 2010 in my enviroment and to my surprise the process has changed, there are a few more steps involved in the process.



I am applying my exported settings but they arn't working

You not alone, it took me a while to work out what was going on here.

In Word 2007 the process was to open Word, set the custom advanced settings you wanted (such as picture in front of text), close word, jump into the registry and export the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data\Settings] value. Then you could subsequently import it during the logon process with a logon script.

The first part of the process remains the same, but  began havinb problems when I applied the .reg file during logon. When I opened Word the settings were not applied, yet if I re-ran the patch it worked, the settings applied perfectly.

After 15 minutes of chasing my tail, I finally realized that the issue was Word needed to be started before the .reg file could be applied. This is caused by Word writing a number of registry values (and overriding the above value) when it starts for the first time per user account. So if you apply the settings before Word is launched they are resultantly wiped on the first launch.

The Resolution

The fix is quite easy, but it did take some messing around with settings combinations to work out which settings I needed and which I didn't. Obviously I don't want to export the whole Office 2010 HKCU  key as there is some imformation regarding licensing, user names, etc, that I don't want to apply to every account.

The following base settings need to be applied, they stop Word from overriding your customizations.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\General]

"ShownOptIn"=dword:00000001

"FirstRunTime"=dword:0151d1bc

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Migration]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Migration\Office]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Migration\Word]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options]

"FirstRun"=dword:00000000

"BkgrndPag"=dword:00000001

"ATUserAdded"=dword:00000001

Furthermore to the above base settings you need you apply your customizations. For example, if you wanted to apply word advanced options such as "insert/paste picture as: in front of text", you would create a .reg file with both the above settings AND the exported [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Data\Settings] key.

For "insert/paste picture as: in front of text" option you also need the following value.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options]

"InsertFloating"=dword:00000001

Then you can safely apply that .reg file using a logon script and regardless if a user has started Word 2010 before or not, the settings will be applied

Certain advanced settings have additional registry values that also need applying, such as the "insert/paste picture as: in front of text" example above. If you have other settings you want to apply that arn't working when you export [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Data\Settings] I would recommend getting regshot and comparing before and after snapshots of the "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0 key or using a tool like procmon for live registry monitoring.