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I'm in the process of rolling out Outlook 2010 to all the users in our organization in our Citrix farm environment. Its going pretty smoothly except for one snagging problem. When users try to attach an item to their email the default open/insert file dialog that opens up does not show network drives in the dropdown. (It instead drops them into their redirected my documents folder) This thread here explains the problem further. I've devised a workaround for this by editing our GPO to allow the My Places bar to show on the left side of the dialog box. I have been able to effectively hide the desktop icon and my network places icon in the registry. Unfortunately, modifying the registry is done through the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch in which the changes aren't reflected for every user. Also, there is no way to add custom places for every user as far as I can tell.

I have tried modifying the "Common File Dialog" section in the GPO but from what I can tell Office uses a different setting. Anyone know a way to effectively hide some (not all) the items in the my places bar AND add custom ones for all users?

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  • Can you be specific exactly where in the GPO you tried to make the changes (spell out the entire structure like this: User Configuration>Administrative Templates>and so on down to the key)?
    – KCotreau
    Aug 1, 2011 at 23:28

2 Answers 2

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Yeah, Office uses its own settings for network places:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Open Find\Places

Microsoft KB has a helpful article about this: How to customize the My Places bar in both the Open and the Save As dialog boxes in Office.

Edit

Helpful links from the comments:

Or, if you are lazy like me, just regedit the changes in the logon script.

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  • And I mention in the question that I have done this. Key word being "every" user. Aug 1, 2011 at 21:11
  • "Unfortunately, modifying the registry is done through the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch in which the changes aren't reflected for every user. Also, there is no way to add custom places for every user as far as I can tell." Aug 1, 2011 at 21:12
  • Did you try propagating the Registry changes through the GPO?
    – surfasb
    Aug 1, 2011 at 21:30
  • I didn't. I didn't think of that. I guess that would work. Not sure that is the way I would prefer to have to do it but I may not have any other choice. Thanks. Make your comment an answer and I'll give you credit for it...you know because cleaning up all that dirty information is such a bane. Aug 2, 2011 at 13:48
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Ended up doing this a different way and answering my own question. Thanks to surfasb for leading me down the right path.

Using the Office 2010 Customization tool I was able to add custom registry entries.

First, I set up the My Places bar in Office exactly how I wanted my users to see it. I then opened up regedit, navigated to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Open Find\Places\ and exported that key and its subkeys and values into a .reg file.

I then launched the Office 2010 Customization Tool and imported that reg file into the registry section.

This worked but it did require me to re-install Office 2010 on all my Citrix farm servers. Kind of a pain but well worth it considering the all the whining we were getting from users.

UPDATE: Upon further investigation I found that reinstalling Office on my servers was not needed. I could simply launch the Office customization .msp file and it would apply the changes to already installed office installations. Cool!

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  • I was trying to avoid the reinstall method, but in this case it was worth the effort.
    – surfasb
    Aug 2, 2011 at 16:21
  • Actually after further investigation, I found that reinstall wans't needed. The .msp file that is created using the Office customization wizard can be applied over existing installations. Just double-click and go! Aug 2, 2011 at 16:45
  • Awesome. I haven't tried this personally, but I thought it required a reinstall. Learning something new everyday. . .
    – surfasb
    Aug 2, 2011 at 16:59

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