Hide/Disable the Security options within Microsoft Office (Outlook/Word)

Question

Although a group policy is able to disable the Options section of the File tab in Microsoft Outlook/Word, is it possible to hide/disable the Security option via the Search bar which gives direct access for end users to access the Trust Centre options section.

Answer 1

Hello @Neil C (73) ,

The Trust Center is where you can find security and privacy settings for Microsoft Office programs. With the consistent appearance of the ribbon in Office programs, steps to find the Trust Center are the same for each program.

The options available in the Trust Center allow you to share documents with the people you want, as well as to find and remove hidden information you may not want to disclose.

When changing privacy settings, you should make selections that will help set the level of Office privacy you want. The selections can include getting notification if a document is from a suspicious website or links to one, or making hidden markup visible when files are opened and saved.

Changing Trust Center settings can greatly reduce or increase the security of your computer, its data, data on your organization's network, and other computers on that network. We advise that you consult with your system administrator, or carefully consider the risks, before making changes to Trust Center settings.

Follow the below link to execute the task,

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-my-privacy-options-in-the-microsoft-office-trust-center-d672876e-20d3-4ad3-a178-343d044e05c8

Hope this answers all your queries, if not please do repost back.
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Answer 2

@Neil C (73)

Could you please explain the "Security options"?
I search it via search bar on Word, there is a "Security" result as following image which will jump to Macro settings.

> is it possible to hide/disable the 'Options' and 'Visual Basic Editor' being available in Word (and potentially other office applications) search box

Based on my research, currently we are unable to achieve it.
We can configure a specific function under Options via group policy, but there is no such master switch to turn off all the functions under Options.

The following information, you could have a look. Thanks for your understanding.

• If you run Word or other Office apps in safe mode, most of the settings of Options would be greyed out.
• If you are using MSI versions of Office (Such as volumn licensed of Office Professional Plus 2016, Office Standard 2016), Visual Basic for Applications could be turned off when you deploy Office. For C2R versions of Office, such as Microsoft 365 apps for enterprise, Office Professioanl Plus 2019, if you want to prevent users changing Macro settings, you could use group policy.
  Outlook: Administrative Templates (Users) > Microsoft Outlook 2016 > Security > Trust Center > "Security setting for macros", select "Enable" and choose one level you want.
  
  Word: Administrative Templates (Users) > Microsoft Word 2016 > Word Options > Security > Trust Center > "VBA Macro Notification Settings", enable it and choose one level.
  

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