Hiding drives works in explorer, but not in office apps 2

[TheMac28nearly]

Guys, ive edited the system adm in my policy to hide various drives including the M: and N: drives and applied the loopback setiing

everything works fine when you view from explorer, the user cant see any of the drives. But when they open word etc and do file/open, it opens up inside the profile and they can then browse the contents of the drive. Ive also tried this with the block access but with the same result

whats even more annoying is that ive applied the same changes to the adm on my demo setup via virtual PC, and you cant go any further up than my documents in the user profile

Any ideas why its not hiding it fully on this system, anything else i could do ?

 

[Petje]

What office version are you using ??
For Office 97 doesn't look at the set policy's on hiding drives..
office 2000 didn't do that but there has been a fix released for this problem i beleive..
all other office versions should hide the drives....



Petje
A+, MCP, MCSE on NT4.0 and windows 2000 and Windows server 2003 and CCEA

 

[TheMac28nearly]

Thanks petje

Its office 2000 but it was a first release. Ive installed sr1 and that has prevented me from seeing the whole drive, which is good, but the default opening location is still my documents, albeit the my docs in the cached profile on the citrix server, and they can still save docs in there which we dont want

Is there any way to change that, and change it for every user to a mapped drive or a network location ?

Thanks

Andy

 

[Ogi]

Hi,

You could change the default locations on your config, then export the various registry keys and write them back. For Word, Excel etc etc...However, Outlook will still save attachments in a stupid place cos that's outlook!

Does this help any?

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[Petje]

You can also use folder redirection for your users to redirect the my documents folder to a network share.. (user homedrive)..



Petje
A+, MCP, MCSE on NT4.0 and windows 2000 and Windows server 2003 and CCEA

 

[TheMac28nearly]

Carl, when you say the default locations on your config, i presume your referring to the registry as you mention later

Which area of the registry would I need to look at ?

 

[Ogi]

Hi,

You need to look at the file locations stored in and around:-

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office

Then it depends on your version of office but ranges from
8.0
9.0
10.0

Then from within there, each package has options, export those particular keys and then write them when a user logs in. This will maintain a standard set of file locations for every Citrix User.

Does this help any?

Cheers,
Carl.

 

[TheMac28nearly]

Carl, ive looked in the areas you suggested but I cant any keys that show the default open/save as location within word, or any app for that matter. The office version is 9.0/2000

I did notice there was extra registry keys, when i browsed the registry logged on via rdp as the user, such as MRU locations, but I still couldnt see anything for it.

Petje, the folder redirection works, but it still shows and creates the my documents folder. Ok i can move it away from the profile which is a step in the right direction, but what I wanted was the defualt save location to be inside a specific network share which is a general store for all users. If I create the my documents here for each group of users, or all users, it wouldnt look right, if you get what I mean, as it would be the top level of all of the users files, which everyone needs access to.

Any ideas ?

Andy

 

[patrickrouse]

These are accessible via Group Policy, so you don't have to hack the registry (although I know we all like to). You just need to load the Office 2000 Administrative Template in Group Policy, and it'll let you specify the default save locations. The outlook SecureTempLocation is only accessible via the registry.

Hiding drives is purely asthetic, and there is no foolproof method to secure a system with hiding drives via GPO or registry. You also need to set strict NTFS permissions on the local drives, so users can't muck something up if they end up in the wrong place (by accident or on purpose). You can also use Software Restriction Policies to restrict what apps people can use.

http://www.workthin.com/tshta.htm

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.workthin.com

 

[cnbit]

We are running outlook 2000 in a published Tricerat Desktop. Metaframe XP, Win2k. We made a couple of registry hacks and exported the keys, then when we set up a new user, we just run the .reg files as that user, and Outlook then defaults to save to their U: drive. We are mapping u: to their home folder on a file server.

 

[patrickrouse]

You can apply these registry settings via group policy, or even via a logon script (I prefer GPO) instead of having to do them manually.

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.workthin.com