Popular Post steewy Posted March 4, 2015 Popular Post Posted March 4, 2015 (edited) Hi, Just posting to share how I have manage to disable spell check on word 2010/2013 for students taking exams. Mods, if the topic isn't in the right thread feel free to move it. I have never find any topic anywhere so far that managed to help me completely disable spell check on Word 2010/2013 so here is how you can do it. 1 - You need to install office 2010/2013 GPO Template on your server. You will need to use AdminTemplates_32.exe or AdminTemplates_64.exe not according to your server but according to what version of Office you installed on your clients ! Extract the .exe in a folder. Copy the .admx files to %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions and copy the .adml files from the en-us to %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions\en-us. If you do not copy the .adml files you will get an error once you open the group policy templates ! 2 - I want spell check to be disable only for a group of user so my policy is user based. Create a new GPO and follow and copy the settings from the attached files. I used IDs to disable user shortcuts and disable some buttons on the UI. 3 - After all this, my GPO was working but Word could still pick up any spelling mistake. There is a registry key that is being activated per user on the machine. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools\1.0\Office] "WordSpellingOptions"=dword:0 If dword=5 then spell check is still enable even if your GPO is disabling spell check ! To get around this, like your probably see on my GPO I am creating the registry key when users logon. The key was already present for some users so I also Update the key for some of them ! When an other user logs on, spell check is enable, the registry key only apply by user To make things easier, I already included the key in the zip file attached. Hope that helps.GPO.zip Edited March 4, 2015 by steewy 6
Tall_Paul Posted March 4, 2015 Posted March 4, 2015 Good work! The last time I looked into this we ended up just giving them a very restricted desktop and start menu with just Wordpad available.
RichCowell Posted March 4, 2015 Posted March 4, 2015 That sounds hopeful... I've done as @Tall_Paul mentioned and restricted software to just WordPad... the registry hacks were too fiddly to work with, and not really ideal for us at the time... I know there are other ways of restricting software, but I use Impero to whitelist explorer.exe and wordpad.exe then they're the only things the students can use... Easy to enable/disable or schedule in advance then too based on Computers and/or usernames...
steewy Posted March 4, 2015 Author Posted March 4, 2015 Good work! The last time I looked into this we ended up just giving them a very restricted desktop and start menu with just Wordpad available. This is also what I used to do. The registry key was the last thing I needed. It know works and it has been a long time since I was looking into a way to make it work.
MrLudwig Posted March 5, 2015 Posted March 5, 2015 This turns off Word's spell checking, but does it prevent students going into the options and turning it back on again? I had exactly the same requirement last year for students taking exams. Managed it using Gpo to set deny permissions on a dll file that contains the office spell checking functions. Can't remember the exact dll now (will post when back in work tomorrow) but the affect was to completely disable all the spell checking features for our exam user group accounts. The office apps still work fine, even if the students try to run spell checks, they just see the spell check complete message, but nothing is actually checked, or highlighted by the check as you type feature either. Because the security permissions are set for a group, it only affects the members of that group so can easily be targeted at specific exam accounts, or named student accounts if you want to take the time to add/remove them before and after each exam. I don't go that far, instead I use separate exam accounts which the students have to use. That way I can also prevent access to the students home folders, shared areas and the Internet etc.
Arthur Posted March 5, 2015 Posted March 5, 2015 does it prevent students going into the options and turning it back on again? Yes. Students can't turn it back on because the relevant buttons and shortcuts keys are disabled via the following GPO. User Configuration » Policies » Administrative Templates » Microsoft Word 2013 Disable Items in User Interface » Custom Disable Commands 2 329 790 2349 2469 2566 2705 2788 3217 3219 3958 3997 4025 6111 7343 7387 9056 11323 12842 14453 15780 Disable Shortcut Keys 79,12 84,216 118 118,4 118,16
steewy Posted March 5, 2015 Author Posted March 5, 2015 Yes. Students can't turn it back on because the relevant buttons and shortcuts keys are disabled via the following GPO. User Configuration » Policies » Administrative Templates » Microsoft Word 2013 Disable Items in User Interface » Custom Disable Commands 2 329 790 2349 2469 2566 2705 2788 3217 3219 3958 3997 4025 6111 7343 7387 9056 11323 12842 14453 15780 Disable Shortcut Keys 79,12 84,216 118 118,4 118,16 You said it all They can not switch it back on !
kennysarmy Posted March 5, 2015 Posted March 5, 2015 Good work! The last time I looked into this we ended up just giving them a very restricted desktop and start menu with just Wordpad available. We just used WordPad too - seemed to satisfy everyone...
Arthur Posted March 5, 2015 Posted March 5, 2015 We just used WordPad too - seemed to satisfy everyone. One thing WordPad lacks is autosave. That's quite useful.
Arthur Posted March 19, 2015 Posted March 19, 2015 1. You need to install office 2010/2013 GPO Template on your server. It's probably worth mentioning that for Office 2013, you will want to download the Office 2013 templates rather than the Office 2010 templates. 2013: www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=35554 2010: www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=18968 Ideally they should be copied to your Group Policy central store (\\YourDomain\sysvol\YourDomain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions) instead of the local PolicyDefinitions folder.
Appl3man Posted March 4, 2016 Posted March 4, 2016 I would like to say thank you for this. After trawling the net for days trying to find a solution this was the last peice I needed to make it work and the exams officer is now happy.
mike_ash Posted February 10, 2017 Posted February 10, 2017 (edited) This thread has helped me massively as our school wasn't happy with the wordpad option. I do still have 1 problem though. There doesn't seem to be a gpo setting to disable "Capitalize first letter of table cells" check box. Which mean that the first letter of each paragraph will be auto corrected to be a Capital. Anyone found some sort of reg hack for this? I have googled it but can't find anything that works ps I'm using word 2013, not sure if the gpo settings are different to the 2010 version Thanks, Mike Edited February 10, 2017 by mike_ash
steewy Posted February 21, 2017 Author Posted February 21, 2017 You might need to update your GPO template to office 2013 and you should have the option. I had to re do all my gpos for Word 2016 and downloaded the admx for office 2016 This thread has helped me massively as our school wasn't happy with the wordpad option. I do still have 1 problem though. There doesn't seem to be a gpo setting to disable "Capitalize first letter of table cells" check box. Which mean that the first letter of each paragraph will be auto corrected to be a Capital. Anyone found some sort of reg hack for this? I have googled it but can't find anything that works ps I'm using word 2013, not sure if the gpo settings are different to the 2010 version Thanks, Mike
dalehopper Posted April 28, 2017 Posted April 28, 2017 (edited) has anyone come across a way to disable the word 2013 status bar that still allows spellings to be corrected this seems to show even with the above restrictions in place IGNORE THAT - extra registry entry needed https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/5565fd05-baae-4619-a678-fc941a6d281b/word-2013-status-bar?forum=officeitpro Edited April 28, 2017 by dalehopper 2
swmenzies Posted May 3, 2017 Posted May 3, 2017 We're running Office 2016 but were previously running 2010, which was completely locked down. 2016 has required a few extra registry keys and I'm sure these will apply to 2013 too so I thought I would share them here for anyone struggling. Applied via GPP to user/group: Action: Update Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER Key path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Proofing Tools\1.0\Office Value name: WordSpellingOptions Value type: REG_DWORD Value data: 0x0 (0) Run in logged-on user's security context (user policy option) Yes Action: Update Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER Key path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\word\StatusBar Value name: SpellCheck Value type: REG_DWORD Value data: 0x0 (0) Run in logged-on user's security context (user policy option) Yes Action: Update Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER Key path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\word\options Value name: AutoGrammar Value type: REG_DWORD Value data: 0x0 (0) Run in logged-on user's security context (user policy option) Yes Action: Update Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER Key path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\word\options Value name: AutoSpell Value type: REG_DWORD Value data: 0x0 (0) Run in logged-on user's security context (user policy option) Yes
Rob_D Posted May 3, 2017 Posted May 3, 2017 We've been using ExamWritePad. But this is worth a look. I might sound silly, but does this work for all office applications, or just word?
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