Suppressing Office 2016’s First Run dialog windows

As part of preparing to deploy Office 2016 in my own environment, I wanted to be able to suppress the various “What’s New” dialog windows which are displayed on Office 2016 applications’ first launch to market the applications’ features.

Using the Microsoft Volume License installer to install Office 2016 (or using the volume license serializer package to install the volume license) will include automatic functionality to stop the version-specific “What’s New” dialog windows from appearing. However, I also needed to be able to suppress the initial “What’s New” dialog windows that appear the first launch of Office applications.

In order to suppress the initial “What’s New” dialog windows, certain settings need to be applied to the following files:

• /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist
• /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.PowerPoint.plist
• /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
• /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist
• /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.onenote.mac.plist

Setting: kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 – boolean value (true / false)
Function: Suppresses the “What’s New” dialog for Office 2016 applications’ first launch.
Applied to the following files:

/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.PowerPoint.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.onenote.mac.plist

Setting: FirstRunExperienceCompletedO15 – boolean value (true / false)
Function: Suppresses additional “What’s New” dialog for Outlook and OneNote.
Applied to the following files:

/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.onenote.mac.plist

Note: That is a capital letter O in O15, not zero15.

Setting: SendAllTelemetryEnabled – boolean value (true / false)
Function: Suppresses the offer to send crash reports to Microsoft.
Applied to the following files:

/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.PowerPoint.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.onenote.mac.plist

To automate the deployment of these settings, I’ve developed a script. For more details, see below the jump.

This script is designed to check for individual Office 2016 applications. If an Office 2016 application is found on the Mac in question, the specific settings to suppress the “What’s New” dialog for that application are applied.

	#!/bin/bash
	# Office 2016 for Mac presents "first run" dialogs to the user to market some of its new features.
	# This script will suppress these "first run" dialogs using the following settings:
	#
	# Setting: kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 – boolean value (true / false)
	# Function: Suppresses the "What’s New" dialog for Office 2016 applications' first launch
	#
	# Setting: FirstRunExperienceCompletedO15 – boolean value (true / false)
	# Function: Suppresses additional "What’s New" dialog for Outlook and OneNote.
	# Note: That is a capital letter O in "O15", not zero15.
	#
	# Setting: SendAllTelemetryEnabled – boolean value (true / false)
	# Function: Suppresses the offer to send crash reports to Microsoft
	#
	# Source for settings:
	# http://macops.ca/disabling-first-run-dialogs-in-office-2016-for-mac/
	# Set whether you want to send diagnostic info back to Microsoft. If you want to
	# offer the choice of sending diagonostic data back to Microsoft, set the following
	# value for the submit_diagnostic_data_to_microsoft variable:
	#
	# submit_diagnostic_data_to_microsoft=true
	#
	# By default, the values in this script are set to send no diagnostic data to Microsoft:
	submit_diagnostic_data_to_microsoft=false
	DisableOffice2016FirstRun(){
	# This function will disable the first run dialog windows for all Office 2016 apps.
	# It will also set the desired diagnostic info settings for Office application.
	/usr/bin/defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft."$app" kSubUIAppCompletedFirstRunSetup1507 -bool true
	/usr/bin/defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft."$app" SendAllTelemetryEnabled -bool "$submit_diagnostic_data_to_microsoft"
	# Outlook and OneNote require one additional first run setting to be disabled
	if [[ $app == "Outlook" ]] || [[ $app == "onenote.mac" ]]; then
	/usr/bin/defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft."$app" FirstRunExperienceCompletedO15 -bool true
	fi
	}
	# Run the DisableOffice2016FirstRun function for each detected Office 2016
	# application to disable the first run dialogs for that Office 2016 application.
	if [[ -e "/Applications/Microsoft Excel.app" ]]; then
	app=Excel
	DisableOffice2016FirstRun
	fi
	if [[ -e "/Applications/Microsoft OneNote.app" ]]; then
	app=onenote.mac
	DisableOffice2016FirstRun
	fi
	if [[ -e "/Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app" ]]; then
	app=Outlook
	DisableOffice2016FirstRun
	fi
	if [[ -e "/Applications/Microsoft PowerPoint.app" ]]; then
	app=Powerpoint
	DisableOffice2016FirstRun
	fi
	if [[ -e "/Applications/Microsoft Word.app" ]]; then
	app=Word
	DisableOffice2016FirstRun
	fi

view raw

gistfile1.txt

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The script and an associated payload-free package are available on Github at the following address:

https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/tree/master/rtrouton_scripts/disable_office_2016_first_run_settings