Office AdminTemplatePath GPO headache.

OK. I'm kind of tired of taking this call, so its time to blog on this one.

You want to push a GPO out to your users that specified the path to the RMS templates.

User Configuration\Microsoft Office 2007\Manage Restricted Permissions\Specify Permission Policy Path

So..you set this to %localappdata%\Microsoft\DRM\Templates like a good little doobie.

You go to the client and no templates appear, even though the policy has applied.

What is happening. Well...if you open the Office12.adm file and search for AdminTemplatePath you'll find a line directly above the VALUENAME admintemplatepath that says PART !!L_Empty EDITTEXT

So what this mans is that you can only set a type Reg_SZ, and not a REG_Expand_SZ which is required in order to use environment variables.

The solution is to modify that line to look like this:

PART !!L_Empty EDITTEXT EXPANDABLETEXT

Save the .adm file, then re-apply it.

Your users should start working after that, using your environment variable.

Hope this helps.

Jason