excel - activate addin through a Group Policy object

I have an addin that I'm installing on the roaming profile of users.

Yet I have to activate it manually for every users.

I thought about activating it automatically with GPO.

I read that but it seems to be big for what it is.

Is there a way to activate it automatically with a GPO, in a simpler way?

Thanks

Solution 1:

first solution that need to test:

i remember that in excel 2007 we can make mst file and install with msi in your network by active directory GPO

In this walkthrough we will create a custom Office 2007 source. We will customize our Office 2007 installation via the config.xml and the Office Customization wizard.

1. by regedit

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins

Configure a Registry Item with GPO

2. technet article

Another solution If you can programming or have a programmer in your team, Create New project with Visual Studio and generate msi file that do those actions you need.

then use Group Policy to remotely install software with OU's

you can do more actions with DotNet by C# or VB.net or other syntaxes.

actions like copy activate file to specific directory or etc. here is examples

1. make changes in regedit.exe
2. change content of text file in your installation directory
3. copy dll to desired destination
4. put your app in startup
5. install background service in Windows
6. show balloon tooltip for users like notifications in Android
7. Run PowerShell commands for complete registration and activation
8. copy every licence from Map Network drive to every target PC
9. connect to your SharePoint Server or SQL Database and read information from excel shared filed

gpo install it in your joined computers and execute it (Members in your Active Directory)

Solution 2:

I found a way to make my addin, enabled through a GPIO

You copy the addin on the user's machine and enabled it with the following command line in a command prompt

reg  add  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\Options  /v  OPEN /t  REG_SZ  /d  "DW_connector.xlam"

Please note that you will need to put to change the version of office, based on your version of excel

• Excel 2016 - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\Options
• Excel 2013 - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Excel\Options
• Excel 2010 - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options
• Excel 2007 - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Options