Disable Right-Click in Office 2010 or Windows 7

[enjay]

I need to disable the right-click menu in Word 2010 (our locked down exam accounts can still right-click>synonyms to get a thesaurus); I am happy to take the brutal approach and disable it in the entire of Windows 7 if need be, but whatever I do must be per-user, not per-machine, as the PCs in question are in constant use by "normal" users too.

 

Any ideas?

 

If it can't be disabled, can the right-click context-menu at least be customised to not include "synonyms"?

[andy_b]

Might be overkill, but for our more complex SEN children we use a variant of this autohotkey script to globally disable right clicks:

 

Disable the Right Mouse Button?

[enjay]

Certainly brutal, but I'm not beyond that option if I have to...

[Jamo]

I currently only have Office 2003, but we disable the dictionary files in the Office Common files using Software restriction policies

 

Doesn't stop them from pressing F7 which you cannot disable in office, BUT it does mean that when you do click it, it complains that it cannot find the files!!

[enjay]

Doesn't work in Office 2010, as Office re-installs itself if it cannot find that file (Office 2007 and 2010 do have options for disabling shortcut keys like F7, by the way; not sure if they exist in 2003 or not). Most importantly though, having a system whereby students can still F7 and run the spell checker isn't acceptable.

[DSapseid]

If it was per machine then its easy to do as you an just un-install the dictionary from office as this is what i have done on 3 laptops that are used for exams.

 

As for per user have you looked at the ADM templates for office? i have the 2007 ones and i have just had a quick look at there are 2 options that might fit your bill, they are " Disable commands. - enter a comand bar ID to disable" and "Disable shortcut keys". They may well be more advanced ones for 2010 but i haven't got 2010 yet so haven't got the templates.

 

Also are your students using there normal accounts for exams? I create separate exam accounts for exams and the policy's on these accounts are locked even more than the normal student account you could just block right click for all the exam accounts if need be.

[Jamo]

I know that OFfice 2003 will do the same if you delete the file, whereas if you remove the ability for it to access the DLLs to check for their existence then it doesn't bother trying to reinstall.

 

Unfortunately there is no way on 2003 I looked for ages to find a way. Anyway the SRP means that even if they found a way of pressing F7 whilst standing on their head and spinning round (we know MS like to have strange ways of getting to dialog boxes which are out of the control of admins, my favourite being adding printers using the Add Scanner and Camera Wizard!!) they couldn't actually use it as the dictionary doesn't exist for them to try to run it

[enjay]

@jamo - SRPs don't work with Office 2010. Users need full rights to the .dll file, otherwise Office just gets stuck in an endless reconfiguration loop.

 

@DSapseid - those options allow me to grey out the toolbar buttons for language and spelling, to turn off the "check spelling as you type", and even to disable keyboard shortcuts, however not mouse shortcuts, i.e. Alt+Click or Right Click then "Synonyms".

 

I have pretty much come to the conclusion that this cannot be done in Office 2010, which is an enormous oversight.

[DSapseid]

What about a new group in Ad that has a policy applied to it to disable the context menu then apply that group to the accounts for the exam then remove? or just new accounts like i suggested.

[enjay]

What about a new group in Ad that has a policy applied to it to disable the context menu

Sounds good. How do I do that?

[Jamo]

I am subscribing to the view currently that we should be encouraging the use of Wordpad for cases like this.....

 

 

I feel your pain, I am now no longer looking forward to updating office to 2010 /cry lol

[enjay]

Generally, I would agree with you, and this is what our English Department have decided to do, however MFL will also be doing Controlled Assessment later in the year, and they will require Word as they need to insert tables and calculate a Word count.

[DSapseid]

- Create a new security group in Active Directory called for example "No Right Click".

- In Group Policy editor create a new GPO and in the security filtering options remove "authenticated users" and add "No Right Click" it doesnt have to be assigned to any OU's.

- Edit group policy object and set the setting to disable context menu. Not sure how in Win 7 im afraid as still XP here.

[Jamo]

The disabling right click is application specific, even if you have disabled right click in Windows I think it is still enabled in most apps?? (I think)

[DSapseid]

Just found this article. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/office-software/72390-word-2010-exam-login-remove-right-click-context-menu.html this looks like it will do the job!!

[enjay]

Thanks @DSapseid, dangerously close - that is the right-click context menu blocked, however users can still Alt+Click on a word to open the research pane! I know how to disable keyboard shortcuts, but not keyboard-and-mouse combinations. This is beyond stupid now! Edited February 6, 2012 by enjay

[andy_b]

The brutal autohotkey approach again to disable alt + click

 

!LButton::Return
!RButton::Return

Edited February 6, 2012 by andy_b

[enjay]

Thus disabling the mouse altogether? Unplugging it would achieve the same, of course.

[andy_b]

Thus disabling the mouse altogether? Unplugging it would achieve the same, of course.

 

Er, should only disable clicking when the alt is held down, at least on the three machines I tested it upon.

[enjay]

Er, should only disable clicking when the alt is held down, at least on the three machines I tested it upon.

 

Okay, so what's the full autohotkey script file, and how do I assign it?

[andy_b]

Okay, so what's the full autohotkey script file, and how do I assign it?

 

#NoEnv 
#NoTrayIcon 
#SingleInstance force

!LButton::Return
!RButton::Return

;Exit Routine
!f1::
ExitApp

 

Should do it fine. Download the installer AutoHotkey Download to enable you to compile the script into an exe. This then can be assigned via Group Policy in the user logon / logoff scripts section.

 

You probably wont want to include the "Exit Routine" as alt+f1 closes the exe, I had it in for testing / emergency use (on a fairly obscure key combo).