One of the settings that I am often asked to modify when it comes to Office 2007 deployments is disabling the welcome screen. The welcome screen is displayed the first time a user starts one of the Office programs. The setting can be disabled in registry or in the Office Customization Tool (OCT).

How to disable the setting in registry:

  1. Open registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\General
  2. Add a new Dword (32-bit) Value, type ShownOptIn as the name modify the value to 00000001

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How to disable the setting in OCT:

  2. Extract the adminTemplates.exe file
  3. Copy the entire contents of the \Admin folder to the \Admin folder on the Office 2007 network share
  4. Start Office Customization Toolkit OCTby running setup.exe /admin
  5. Navigate to Features, Modify user Settings, Microsoft Office 2007 System, Privacy, Trust Center
  6. Select Disable Opt-In Wizard on first run
  7. Double click on the setting and select Enable

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  8. Save the MSP file and apply it to your office installation by saving it in the Updates folder (or use the setup.exe /adminfile if you save it to another location)