[ms office - 2010] How to: stop Publisher 2010 needing templates in a stupid place

[sonofsanta]

Just had fun with this one, and by fun, I mean "screaming hissy fit at how stupid Office is". Thought I'd share in case it helps others.

 

Our IT teacher wanted students to create their own Publisher templates and then create a new Publisher file from that template. Despite the myriad Save As policies I'd applied, Publisher still insisted on using C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates as the location. The C: drive, for obvious reasons, is restricted. As such, saving a template popped up an error about insufficient permissions and then let the user save elsewhere; not ideal, but fine. Except that you can only use Custom Templates from this location when going New > My Templates (using File > Open just opens the template for editing, instead of creating a new file based on the template).

 

Long story short, the setting to change this is in Word. Of course. It can be altered manually by opening Word, going to File > Options, Advanced, General section (at the bottom), File Locations button, and altering User templates.

 

You might then think that the GPO is in the same place - Word > Word Options > Advanced > File Locations - but Microsoft apparently couldn't be bothered to include the full complement of settings here. Instead, to set it network wide, you have to use GPP to set a registry key:

 

* User Config > Preferences > Windows Settings > Folders

** Create; H:\OfficeTemplates; run in logged on user's security context; Item Level Targeting > If folder H:\OfficeTemplates does not exist

 

* User Config > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry

** Update; hive = HKCU; path = Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\General; name = UserTemplates; type = REG_EXPAND_SZ; data = H:\OfficeTemplates\

 

(assuming H: is the mapped drive for home directory, ofc)

 

That then creates a specific sub folder and tells Office to use that for templates. Sub folder is a good idea as setting it to the user homedir slows down the loading of Publisher as it scans the whole folder for templates.

 

STUPID OFFICE.

[X-13]

(assuming H: is the mapped drive for home directory, ofc)

 

Do you have to do it with a drive letter? Or can you use UNC paths and variables?

 

for example:

 

"\\server\Users\%username%\Office Templates"

[sonofsanta]

Could likely do it with %homeshare%\OfficeTemplates instead - which would map the full UNC path - but doing it in logged in context lets drive letter work. Don't know if one is better than t'other, I've used both in the past with success, the only thing to watch out for with %homeshare% and not ticking the logged on context is that the computer account may not have permission to create the folder.

 

(never tried %homeshare% and the tickbox in combination... feel free to experiment, I guess)