Is there a GPO for IE Page Setup?

Using 2k3 server, is it possible to for a group policy to set all user accounts to have a specified margin and header/footer in the page setup?

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Claymoore

The short answer is no, but the long answer is yes - sort of.

No, there is no GPO setting to control the margin size and header/footer. However, these are registry settings, so you can edit the registry using your company's preferred method. This is where the registry keys are: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup

Since the setting are in Current_User, the users have rights to change them. If you haven't disabled registry editing tools through group policy, you could even run a regedit script in a login script - there's no school like the old school.

We removed the header and footer for one of our business units through Group Policy. I created a very simple script using the SMS Installer (I blanked out the header and footer string values), compiled it into an executable, and used the 'Run these programs at user logon' to run the compiled exe. This way, it runs every time they log in just in case they turn the headers and footers back on at some point during the day.

Hope that helps

Jim P.

Claymoore wrote:

The short answer is no, but the long answer is yes - sort of.

... This is where the registry keys are: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup...

Hope that helps

I have two HP laptops next to each other. I log on to both with the same profile (basic user) and one prints without the generic headers/footers while the other one prints with them. Since the user has no rights to see the registry, I log off and log on as an administrator. I check the registry at the above stated lcoation and both show the header/footer blank.

There must be another location where those header/footers are coming from. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Jim

brad-

Hey Jim, I hunted all over the internet for about a day and found nothing. It doesnt seem to be possible.

We have about 40 clerks that move around and print to different printers, and their reciepts get rejected if they have headers/footers on them. As you can imagine, each clerk that moves to a new PC for the first time will have the default page setup...so we were trying to find an administrative way to nip that. The only thing we came up with after alot of looking was to say X clerk was allowed to log onto Y machines. Then, when they moved, they HAD to tell us and we would have to manually change their page setup settings. Pain in the @$$, but its the best we could do.

Jim P.

Brad,

I think I pieced the puzzle pieces together. Try the following:

Log on as administrator (I logged on to the domain).
Go to the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup
Footer and Header should be blank.
I set the margins at .166 as per my needs.
REBOOT.
Logon as a user and see if it works.

I was told that if I logged on as administrator and changed the page set up settings, they would propegate to the rest of the users but it was not happening constistenly on all my machines.

I am an amateur at this so I am not sure if the rebooting is somehow required in order for the administrator settings to take effect but as of right now, I have logged on under two different usernames and printed to two different printers from 6 machines and I have no headers or footers.

I hope this helps.[/img]

dynamik

I'm not familiar with this hack, but if you're making these changes for HKEY_CURRENT_USER, it should only to the user you're logged in as. I'd do a registry search for "PageSetup" and see if there is another option in HKEY_USERS or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. You could probably just navigate to it as well. The path will probably be the same.

Jim P.

dynamik wrote:

I'm not familiar with this hack, but if you're making these changes for HKEY_CURRENT_USER, it should only to the user you're logged in as. I'd do a registry search for "PageSetup" and see if there is another option in HKEY_USERS or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. You could probably just navigate to it as well. The path will probably be the same.

I agree with you. I thought the same thing but tech support for one of my vendors provided the solution, however, they did not tell me to reboot. I think that caused some of the machines to work and others not to.

Thinking along the same lines as you, I did a search for the PageSetup and there were no other keys related to it.

We'll see how it goes.

dynamik

I don't understand how that setting could affect other users. The current user subtree is just a reference to the user that is logged in.

Jim P.

Looks like it's failing now. I have two machines that are printing wrong again

Jim P.

Ok, this is the only way I could make this work.

I made a .reg file that looks like this

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup]
"header"=""
"footer"=""
"margin_bottom"="0.16667"
"margin_left"="0.16667"
"margin_right"="0.16667"
"margin_top"="0.16667"

and a .bat file that looks like this

regedit.exe /s c:\PageSetup.reg

I put the .bat file in the the start up folder for all users and it works. I am not sure if that would be an option in your environment but it did the trick for me.

Good luck.

brad-

Jim P. wrote:

Brad,

I think I pieced the puzzle pieces together. Try the following:

Log on as administrator (I logged on to the domain).
Go to the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup
Footer and Header should be blank.
I set the margins at .166 as per my needs.
REBOOT.
Logon as a user and see if it works.

I was told that if I logged on as administrator and changed the page set up settings, they would propegate to the rest of the users but it was not happening constistenly on all my machines.

I am an amateur at this so I am not sure if the rebooting is somehow required in order for the administrator settings to take effect but as of right now, I have logged on under two different usernames and printed to two different printers from 6 machines and I have no headers or footers.

I hope this helps.[/img]

Ya that was one of the first things we tried to do. When I logged in as other users, it was still the default. It didnt work for us.

Thanks though

Claymoore

Jim P. wrote:

Claymoore wrote:

The short answer is no, but the long answer is yes - sort of.

... This is where the registry keys are: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup...

Hope that helps

I have two HP laptops next to each other. I log on to both with the same profile (basic user) and one prints without the generic headers/footers while the other one prints with them. Since the user has no rights to see the registry, I log off and log on as an administrator. I check the registry at the above stated lcoation and both show the header/footer blank.

There must be another location where those header/footers are coming from. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Jim

The registry entries are in Current_User, but when you log on as administrator that account's NTUSER.DAT (from c:\documents and settings\administrator) gets loaded as the Current_User hive. When you log on as a different user, that user's ntuser.dat file gets loaded as the Current_User hive - HKEY_Current_User reflects the currently logged on user. In order to edit a different user's hive, you need to open their NTUSER.DAT file by using the Load Hive option in regedit. Open Regedit (or regedt32 in Win2K - you can only do this in regedt32 in earlier OSs), click on HKey_Local_Machine, then click on File and choose Load Hive. Browse the the user's profile folder and open their ntuser.dat (if you can't see it, then make sure the hidden and system files are being displayed). The registry values you need to change will be in a slightly different spot depending on what you named the hive - for example they would be in HKEY_Local_Machine\Sally\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\PageSetup. Change the settings and then unload the hive by clicking on File and then Unload Hive.

We have about 40 clerks that move around and print to different printers, and their reciepts get rejected if they have headers/footers on them. As you can imagine, each clerk that moves to a new PC for the first time will have the default page setup...so we were trying to find an administrative way to nip that. The only thing we came up with after alot of looking was to say X clerk was allowed to log onto Y machines. Then, when they moved, they HAD to tell us and we would have to manually change their page setup settings. Pain in the @$$, but its the best we could do.

Do the users have roaming profiles? The ntuser.dat file (which gets loaded as the HKEY_Current_User hive) is a part of their profile, so it will follow them if their profile roams. Otherwise you will need to edit their profile on every PC they use by following the directions above. To change the settings in the Default User profile, just open and edit the NTUSER.DAT file in the Default User folder (C:\Documents and Settings\Default User or whatever network share you might use) using the directions earlier. Don't bother editing the .Default key under the HKEY_Users hive since that is the system profile and has nothing to do with the Default User.

That should take care of it.