Group Policy Object to Block the Office File Validation Add-In

This "update" from Microsoft caused a lot of issues with files being opened (12 minutes for a 25K Excel 2003 spreadsheet) across a network.  Once the issue was isolated it wouldn't have made sense to go to all of the machines on every network affected and manually remove it.  Well you're in luck because here's a group policy template you can create and apply to your networks to prevent this update from causing you any problems.

msoffice2003validation.adm

CLASS USER

CATEGORY "Microsoft Office Validation Add-In"

CATEGORY "2003"

POLICY "Enable in Excel"

KEYNAME "Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation"

VALUENAME "EnableOnLoad"

VALUEON NUMERIC 1

VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0

END POLICY

POLICY "Enable in PowerPoint"

KEYNAME "Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\PowerPoint\Security\FileValidation"

VALUENAME "EnableOnLoad"

VALUEON NUMERIC 1

VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0

END POLICY

POLICY "Enable in Word"

KEYNAME "Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\FileValidation"

VALUENAME "EnableOnLoad"

VALUEON NUMERIC 1

VALUEOFF NUMERIC 0

END POLICY

END CATEGORY

END CATEGORY