MicrosoftNow, I hasten to add that before doing any of the following you should run it past your IT department. I wouldn't want you (or anyone else) getting into trouble with your company.
I imagine that in your work environment there's a group policy and you'd normally require admin privileges to modify registry hives (very sensible!). But can you run regedit (this will be effectively in mostly read-only mode) from your local machine at all w/o admin privileges? Two options: yes, or no.
REGISTRY ACCESS VIA REGEDIT = YES
If yes, are the HKCU keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\FirstSession\word and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs\word present? Two options: yes, or no.
HKCU keys present = yes
Theoretically at least, you should have read/write access to the HKCU hive (as, among other things, it's where a number of program preferences are stored, which have to be written by your local machine).
But will the regedit group policy allow you to manually delete them from within regedit?
Yes? Problem solved, at least for now.
No? Then how do you modify those registry HKCU hive keys under that regedit group policy, since your m/c does manage to do this all the time as and when required w/o seeking admin privileges?
I think you should be able to bring up the Windows/DOS command line Run app (do a Windows search for "run"). Type the following (w/o the quote marks):
"reg delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\FirstSession\word"
Confirm whether you want to delete the key/value (Y or N), and then type
"reg delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs\word"
Confirm you want to delete the key/value.
This just manually does what the desktop reg alteration file does, but using command line instructions rather than the regedit GUI. You could have these strings/values in a Notepad file (saved as .txt of course) to copy and paste across when required.
HKCU keys present = no
The keys must be elsewhere in the registry in whatever Enterprise version of Office your company uses. Sorry, but you’re stuck up the creek with those pesky new retrogressive comments.
REGISTRY ACCESS VIA REGEDIT = NO
Follow the command line procedure noted above. If the key doesn't exist then there is nothing to delete, so no harm can be done. (Normal caveats apply! And double check you have the full path copied across.) At least that is my local experience, and on the face of it logical. Changes like add or modify a registry key would be a different matter and not recommended if you can’t see what keys are present!
If this op doesn’t work then the keys must be elsewhere in the registry in whatever Enterprise version of Office your company uses.
I hasten to reiterate that before doing the above you should run it past the IT bods. If they say no, then don't do it.
Then, providing you leave at least one Word file open before opening a new one and enter sleep mode rather than turning your m/c off, the old comments persist (for now). Repeat as necessary.
