Disable HDD-Writes in Folder Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Office\OTele

Volker Busch 1 Reputation point
2021-01-10T10:26:30.953+00:00

On several Server2019 terminal servers (session hosts) with Office2019 installed, we have extreme (and unnecessary) hard disk write access with Office Telemetry in the Office\OTele user folder for all users.

Even with a lot of googling, we couldn't find anything how we could switch off this telemetry via group policy or in any other way.

We were able to turn off Windows Server telemetry via group policy:
HKLM \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ DataCollection
Unfortunately, that doesn't help with Office.

For Office, we found that this should be set:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office \ Common \ ClientTelemetry]
"DisableTelemetry" = dword: 00000001

If we start GPEDIT.MSC on the server via admin, the folder
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software
is empty.

Does anyone have a solution that we can switch off the unnecessary load from Outlook, Excel and Winword?

55061-image.png
54988-image.png

Office Management
Office Management
Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
2,175 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

4 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Erin Ding-MSFT 4,461 Reputation points
    2021-01-11T08:10:03.817+00:00

    @Volker Busch

    If you would like to switch off this telemetry, you could try to disable Turn on telemetry data collection and Turn on data uploading for Office Telemetry Agent in User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016\Telemetry Dashboard to check this issue.
    More information about related registry, you could refer to “Disable data collection for the agent”.


    If an Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

    0 comments No comments

  2. Volker Busch 1 Reputation point
    2021-01-11T08:48:22.837+00:00

    This is the Problem, when i start REGEDIT.msc on the Server i dont have this Key:
    55225-image.png

    and i dont have the Password for the 40 User which uses the Terminalserver!


  3. Volker Busch 1 Reputation point
    2021-01-12T08:59:44.197+00:00

    We found it yesterday and installed the ADMX/ADML Files from Download Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) and Office Customization Tool for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Office 2019, and Office 2016 from Official Microsoft Download Center on the domain controller. Then in den GPO we added the following.
    55616-image.png

    55677-image.png

    All users was logged out, but today we have again this Problem:
    55713-image.png

    It is also noticeable that these same users, for whom the writes are running, need the most CPU Time!

    What could we do?
    (I Read in an other Post set the Filepath to Read Only, but i think this is not a good solution)

    0 comments No comments

  4. Volker Busch 1 Reputation point
    2021-01-18T07:40:37.36+00:00

    We found now the solution:

    In the end it only helped to distribute the registry entry for all users of the domain via GPO. This is how it was done.

    1. Open Group Policy Management on the DC
    2. Double click the “Default Domain Policy” to edit it
    3. Then set the following two entries under “User configuration - Settings - Windows settings - Registry”
    4. To delete the "sendtelemetry" key

    57583-image.png

    1. To create the "DisableTelemetry" key

    57498-image.png

    After the next user login, the registry entries were processed and telemetry was completely switched off.


Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.