Forum Discussion
[Community tool] Find the GPO, registry value and Intune setting for any Office ribbon button
Hi everyone,
as a technical service owner for Microsoft 365 Apps, one question comes up for me again and again: which policy actually controls this button or option?
The information is all there – in the Office ADMX/ADML templates, the Office Fluent UI control ID lists, the Intune Settings Catalog and many Learn articles. But I never found it in one place, so every answer meant connecting several sources by hand. Especially when onboarding new colleagues, this costs a lot of time.
So I built a free community tool for it: Office Admin Explorer
https://tools.pascal-donath.de/office-admin-explorer/
How it works
It's a clickable mock of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook (ribbon, File menu, Options, Trust Center). Click any element and you get:
- idMso and Policy ID (for customUI and the "Disable commands" policy)
- the ADMX policy with its exact path in Group Policy Management
- the registry value it writes, with ready-to-copy PowerShell or .reg
- the matching Intune Settings Catalog entry
- Cloud Policy notes, step-by-step guides and Microsoft Learn links
The search covers all Office ADMX policies (2,400+) and command IDs (8,000+), including elements that aren't part of the mock.
Also included
- Ribbon builder – hide or disable buttons, groups or tabs and export the result as customUI XML, a macro-free add-in (.dotx / .xlam / .ppam) or the "Disable commands" policy for Group Policy and Intune
- Deployment view – configuration.xml generator for the Office Deployment Tool
- User Support view – typical user problems: symptom → cause → fix
Policy names and registry values are checked against Microsoft's ADMX/ADML files, and the Intune mapping against the Graph settings catalog. It runs in the browser without sign-in and is available in English and German. Please test any configuration on a lab device or pilot group first.
I'd like your input
- How do you handle this today – ADMX search, Group Policy Search, the Intune catalog, your own documentation?
- Which Office settings do you get asked about most often? I'd like to add the most requested ones next.
If you find a wrong or outdated entry, every entry has a "Report it on GitHub" link – corrections are very welcome.
Thanks!
Pascal
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*Transparency note: The tool was developed with the help of AI. The content is based on my own admin experience, and policy names, registry values and Intune mappings are validated automatically against Microsoft's official sources (ADMX/ADML templates, Fluent UI control lists, Microsoft Graph settings catalog). This is a community project and not affiliated with Microsoft.*