It took a while but eventually Microsoft got round to providing the Group Policy administration templates for Office 2007 in ADMX format, so they can be used properly with the Group Policy management tools in Vista and Windows server 2008. By properly, I mean using a central store and having the option to use ADML files to view and edit policies in an administrator’s preferred local language. You can get the ADM, ADMX and ADML files for Office 2007 in a single download here which is a self-extracting file that creates a folder structure containing all the relevant files.
This also has the bonus of including the Office Customisation Tool (OCT) which you can use to create an MSP file to customise a centralised network installation of Office for new installations, upgrades, or reconfiguration. You can find out more about the methods for customising Office 2007 setup files here and specifics about the OCT here. In addition the download extracts an Excel workbook “Office2007GroupPolicyAndOCTSettings.xls” that provides information about the 2007 Office release Group Policy settings and OPA settings, making it clear what can be pre-customised at the point of installation and what can only be set through policies.
You will probably also find the Office 2007 settings reference file useful. This is a comprehensive reference for all the settings in the GUI for Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word 2007. This gives the equivalent UI path in 2003 (where there is one), the default setting, what choices can be made, what policy settings exist and which registry keys those change. A very helpful file for understanding how to customise the user experience, and deciding which parts to do through policies and which settings are better left to users (and perhaps prompting you to educate them about the usefulness of some of these).
