I'm looking for a way to completely disable add-ins and the Office Store in Microsoft Office 2024 LTSC Standard. The issue is that the devices have been set up as "offline" machines, meaning manual management is necessary for both devices and users. I've discovered one method to disable the Office Store by adjusting specific registry settings:
"Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00"
"[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs] "disableomexcatalogs"=dword:00000001 "disableallcatalogs"=dword:00000001"
However, this only applies to the current user. I attempted to apply the same registry settings under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to affect all users, but that didn't work. Thus, my current plan is to set the registry entry for each user individually, as there shouldn't be any new users added. I'm curious if there's a more efficient solution to this issue, and just to clarify, options like creating a Microsoft Entra instance are off the table for me.
2 Answers
Unfortunately, there's no system-level equivalent for what you're trying to achieve. I suggest looking into editing the default user profile in the ntuser.dat file before handing the computers to the end users.
You might want to consider using Group Policy Preferences to set that registry key through User Configuration. It should apply to all users without needing manual adjustments.
I tried that too, but the Group Policy changes didn’t seem to register in the registry for some reason. That’s why I opted to modify them directly instead.