Buttons, functions or button groups can be deactivated with the help of group policies or the registry. This small example shows how the Microsoft Store can be deactivated in Outlook.
These two components are required to deactivate certain buttons or menus:
- Office 2016 Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML)
- Office 2016 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers
The first download contains Group Policy settings for Office 2016. The second download contains Excel files with all available buttons / groups and their IDs.
Each button in Outlook has a name and an ID. The name and ID can be found in the Excel lists of the Office 2016 help files.
The difficulty is therefore to find the correct ID. The "Store" button from this example is called "OfficeExtensionsAppStore" (outlookexplorercontrols.xlsx) and has the ID 16243:
As soon as you have found the correct IDs, you can create a new group policy.
The files from the ADMX folder of the Office 2016 Administrative Templates must be copied to the C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions folder on a domain controller.
The option "Disable command bar buttons and menu items" can now be activated in a group policy and the corresponding IDs specified:
After the group policy has been applied, the "Store" button is grayed out. In this way, almost all Outlook functions can be switched off.
For example, you could prevent users from printing emails or attaching attachments to an email. There are certainly enough use cases.
A little tip: An Outlook in English helps immensely when searching for the respective IDs.
The settings can also be made directly in the registry. In this example, two buttons are disabled:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\disabledcmdbaritemslist] "TCID1"="16243" "TCID2"="16373"
The character string TCID is always incremented by one. Of course, Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. can also be adapted in this way. Group policy templates and help files are also available for older Office versions: