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Excel 365 "Allow Trusted Locations on my network (not recommended)" not being set by GPO

ChrisAdmin123 16 Reputation points
2022-10-14T07:50:45.773+00:00

Greetings,

since the update of office in june excel files with macros cannot be opened on our network locations by default, we wanted to roll out a GPO to restore the previous state.

The problem we are facing is, the checkbox for the "Allow Trusted Locations on my network (not recommended)" inside the Trust Center is not being set by this GPO even though it is activated and rolled out. The paths for our network locations are however added and present inside the Trust Center under Trusted Locations.

We checked our GPO by using gpresult on our clinets and it shows up.

We checked the registry as well. Here the value "allownetworklocations" under "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\excel\security\trusted locations" is set to "1".

Our Excel 365 clients do not care unfortunately...

We've also noticed that shortly after the GPOs are updated on our clients (checked with event viewer) the checkbox is set and grayed out. But if you reopen this after a minute it is gone again.
It seems something else is overwriting this setting. What could this be?

Do we need to roll this out in The Office 365 Admin Center under Configuration and not in our GPOs on our DMCs, perhaps?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For business | Windows
Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | User experience | Other

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  1. Tommy Tielemans | Mabo E&A 5 Reputation points
    2023-01-26T10:32:43.08+00:00

    We have been struggling with this exact issue too lately.

    O365 GPO's are being applied in the registry but not always picked up by O365 (Excel in our case).

    The only reliable way for us was adding the registry keys outside the policy hive.

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\office\16.0\excel\security\trusted locations

    1 person found this answer helpful.
  2. Limitless Technology 44,766 Reputation points
    2022-10-17T21:16:44.787+00:00

    Hello there,

    This behavior has been confirmed by Microsoft in one of their blogs.

    VBA macros are a common way for malicious actors to gain access to deploy malware and ransomware. Therefore, to help improve security in Office, we’re changing the default behavior of Office applications to block macros in files from the internet.

    To prepare for this change, we recommend that you work with the business units in your organization that use macros in Office files that are opened from locations such as intranet network shares or intranet websites.

    Macros from the internet will be blocked by default in Office https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/security/internet-macros-blocked

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    --If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept it as an answer–

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