Friday, April 23, 2010

Fixing the Ofice 2007 Quick Access Toolbar for users with Roaming Profiles, QAT files do not roam from Locallow folder.

Hi All,
I went back and tackled this issue again. There are many sites out there that suggest the fix of this issue.

First some background. When Microsoft Office 2007 was released Microsoft placed the settings for the Quick Access Toolbar (.qat file) in the Locallow folder of the users profile. The locallow folder can never roam so if sites were using roaming profiles, a users settings they set on their Office Applications quick access tool bar would get lost after every logout of their session. This became quite a frustration for users.

Over the years many suggestions were given including using scripts to copy the qat files in and out of the users profile at login and logoff. A big pain, and a way to slow down logins. Microsoft released a "fix" to add a registry key to the users profile (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958062 and later included in Office 2007 Service Pack 2 )however, that fix was still a Manual fix. Admins had to edit each users registry in order for this to work.

Enterprising people came up with solutions to use Citrix Profiles in order to change the setting (http://blogs.sepago.de/helge/2009/12/09/fixing-office-2007s-quick-access-toolbars-with-citrix-user-profile-manager/)

Ok, but I don't use Citrix profiles and I have a thousand users with roaming profiles that have the issue.

SO, still searching I ran across an obscure blog posting by Kay Sellenrode that links to an Adm file that provides the ideal solution. Set the Key for the qat file redirection in the Microsoft or SP2 fix via Group Policy!
Kays post is here: http://geekswithblogs.net/ksellenrode/archive/2009/01/05/128362.aspxBravo!

So I guess the solution has been around a bit it just takes some searching to find it.
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Here is Kay Sellenrodes Posting:
"A lot of people that migrated to Office 2007 probably ran into the issue that the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) is not included in the Roamind profile.

This caused a lot of frustration, until a while ago the only solution was to have logon/logoff scripts that would copy the files over to a roaming location.
But Microsoft heard the complaints and they silently released an update to address this.
You are now able to move the QAT files to the roaming part of your profile through the following steps

Request the hotfix http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955142/?FR=1 (JK Or install Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is later fix)
In most cases this update is already installed, so you probably don't need it.
Change the Registry, so that the hotfix will become active, use one of the following three solutions
Install the ADM or ADMX template which you can find at http://blogs.platani.nl/downloads.php
If the System is not managed by policies you can change the following registry key for each user.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars
QuickAccessToolbarRoaming DWORD with a value of 1

In case that you are using policies you can change the following registry key, though I would advise you to use the ADM or ADMX instead.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars
QuickAccessToolbarRoaming DWORD with a value of 1 "
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Of course the easiest solution for me was to download and use the sensational group policy template by platoni which worked like a champ. Links are below.

Office QAT ADM file ADM file to set the right policy value when using the Office 955142 hotfix (jk: or Service Pack 2) http://blogs.platani.nl/tools/OfficeQAT-ADM.zip


Office QAT ADMX file ADMX files to set the right policy value when using the Office 955142 hotfix (jk: or Service Pack 2) http://blogs.platani.nl/tools/OfficeQAT-ADMX.zip

We know how these items can "disappear from the web so here is the text from the  QAT.ADMX and QAT.ADM files in case they do so you can copy and paste and make your own. First the QAT,ADMX file:
--Right Click and use select all from the below box and then right click and copy the text into a text file to create your admx file.--

---End of ADMX file--

And here is the text from Qat.adm file
--Start cutting below this--
#if version <= 2 CLASS USER CATEGORY !!GPONLY_CAT POLICY !!GPONLY_POL KEYNAME Software\Policies PART !!GPONLY_TEXT1 TEXT END PART PART !!GPONLY_TEXT2 TEXT END PART END POLICY END CATEGORY CLASS MACHINE CATEGORY !!GPONLY_CAT POLICY !!GPONLY_POL KEYNAME Software\Policies PART !!GPONLY_TEXT1 TEXT END PART PART !!GPONLY_TEXT2 TEXT END PART END POLICY END CATEGORY #endif; version <= 2 #if version >= 3
CLASS MACHINE
CLASS USER
CATEGORY !!OFFQAT
KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars
POLICY !!EnableRoamingQAT
VALUENAME QuickAccessToolbarRoaming
VALUEON NUMERIC 1
VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0
EXPLAIN !!EnableRoamingQAT_EXP
#if version >= 4
SUPPORTED !!SUPPORTED_WIN2K
#endif
END POLICY
END CATEGORY ;GENERAL
#endif
[strings]
; GPONLY
GPONLY_TEXT1="System Policy Editor does not support this policy template."
GPONLY_TEXT2="You must use Group Policy in Windows 2000."
GPONLY_CAT="Unsupported Administrative Template"
GPONLY_POL="OfficeQAT.ADM"
; SUPPORTED
SUPPORTED_WIN2K="At least Microsoft Windows 2000"
; CATEGORIES
OFFQAT="QAT files."
; CATEGORY EXPLANATIONS
OFFQAT_EXP="QAT files."
; POLICIES
EnableRoamingQAT="Change the default location of QAT files."
; PARTS
; POLICY EXPLANATIONS
EnableRoamingQAT_EXP="This setting let's you change the default location of your QAT files in Office 2007, so they are included in the roaming profiles."
---Stop cutting above here--


I hopes this solves your headaches on this issue!!

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