Change Word & Excel Settings for ALL FUTURE USERS

Question

We have a computer lab in which each student has his/her own login.  They use Word and Excel 2010 in the classroom.  There are several settings that the teacher likes to set for his students, but currently he must log in to all 120 of the student
accounts and set the settings.  A summary of those settings is:
Change default font size to 12
Change paragraph to single spacing with no space after text
Add items to the quick launch bar at the top of the screen
I'm working on setting up a new computer for imaging for him.  Is there any way for me to make these setting changes globally, so that each student gets the correct settings when they log on for the first time?

Answer 1

Hi,
For Word, the custom font is customized via the Normal.dotm template, located at %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates. Navigate to this location, right click on the template and choose Open. On the Home tab, in the Font group select the font of your choice, then
right click on the editing area, click Paragraph and select single spacing and other settings you need to configure, click OK then save the file.
For Excel, the font is customized via a registry key:
Important
This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the
registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry,
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Back-up-the-registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options
Name: Font
Type: REG_SZ
Value: Arial,12
After we define the Word template and changed the Excel Font registry key, we need to deploy it globally via an MSP file:
1. Create a customization .msp file using the Office Customization Tool: drag and drop the
setup.exe of the Office installation source in the Run box, and pass it the switch
/admin
2. This will open OCT (Office Customization Tool)
3. Select the first option: Create a new Setup customization file for the following product and click OK
4. We are now ready to add all our files into then MSP
5. Under Additional Content – click Add Files to add here the template for Word (Normal.dotm). In the
File Destination Path dialog box, in the Destination path on the user's computer list, select
%AppData\Microsoft\Templates, and then click OK
6. Under Additional Content - click Remove files, and then click
Add. In the File Path dialog box, under
Path and file name of file to be deleted, enter %AppData%\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dotm, and then click
OK. (This will remove any Normal.dotm file from the users’ computers that is from a previous installation of Word.)
7. In the console tree, click Add registry entries, and then click
Add. Follow the path I mentioned for Excel: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options, type in the information and click
OK to save.
8. In the console tree, click Remove registry entries, and then click
Add. Type in the registry key information above and click
OK to save. This will remove the previous font setting for Excel.
We have now finished creating the customization file. You can save it from
File – Save as – Name.msp
We are now ready to create the start-up script and add it to the GPO that will deploy these settings to the whole organization.
To create the .bat file that will be used in the start-up script, please open Notepad and use the following text:
setlocal
reg query HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Patches\9EA4D5478DD17EE45B1A1E670AC471BC
if %errorlevel%==1 (goto Patches) else (goto End)
REM If 1
returned, the patch is not installed. Install the patch here.
:Patches
"%windir%\system32\msiexec.exe" /p \\server\shared_folder\Name.msp /qn
REM If 0 or other was returned, the patch is already installed. Do nothing.
:End
Endlocal
Please NOTE that you need to change the
\\server\shared_folder to point to the correct path and MSP file in your environment.
Save the Notepad file as Name.bat in the same shared location (\\server\shared_folder)
On the Domain Controller create a new Policy and assign it to the desired
Organizational Unit. Edit the policy and go under:
User Configuration – Windows Settings –
Scripts (Logon/Logoff)
Double click Logon – click Add
Under Script name please type the location and the name of the .bat file we created earlier (please use UNC path and not a drive letter)
For your reference:
Office 2010 – Deploying custom fonts across all applications
http://blogs.technet.com/b/emeaoffice/archive/2012/12/12/office-2010-deploying-custom-fonts-across-all-applications.aspx
Set the default font and page margins in Office Word 2007 for a group of users(Also works for Word 2010)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd631810(office.12).aspx
By the quick launch bar, do you mean the Quick Access Toolbar? If so, when you customize the it in a particular application, Office 2010 creates an *.officeUI file for that application that contains the customization XML. With this understanding, you can
do one of the following:
•Modify an existing *.officeUI file with the desired customizations by updating the XML code.
•Create the desired customizations by using the Customization dialog in the Microsoft Office application, apply the customizations, and then browse to the *.officeUI file.
Please note we need to customize the Quick Access Toolbar in each application.
Detailed steps to deploy the Quick Access Toolbar can be found in this MSDN article below:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee704589(office.14).aspx
I hope the information is helpful.
Regards,
Melon Chen
TechNet Community Support
It's recommended to download and install
Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT), which is developed by Microsoft Support teams. Once the tool is installed, you can run it at any time to scan for hundreds of known issues in Office
programs.