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LibreOffice 4.2 introduced the ability to control LibreOffice settings via registry keys. In so doing, it allows Group Policy to set LibreOffice settings.

Unfortunately, LibreOffice have not provided much documentation on their main.xcd file, so it's hard to know exactly what registry key you need to create in order to set a particular setting.

With this admx file, hopefully it will be easy for you to set LibreOffice settings, without trying to figure out where the particular setting is stored in main.xcd.

LibreOffice provided the documentation on how to create the registry key that corresponds to the xml here.

This project provides a stub admx and adml file for LibreOffice and has been tested against 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4.

In late April 2015, Collabora released an ADMX for LibreOffice that is available here: https://libreoffice-from-collabora.com/windows-group-policy-admx/. Since then this project has not been maintained. It is recommended that you use the ADMX provided and maintained by Collabora.

Table of Contents Installation and Use Enforceable Settings Multi-value Settings Discouraged Scenarios Contributing

Installation and Use

Follow the instructions in the Group Policy page to install the Group Policy is the correct location.

Unfortunately LibreOffice group policy reads from the Computer Configuration so it is difficult to target specific users. The Group Policy will apply to all users of a computer.

If you are having issues, check out the Troubleshooting page.

Enforceable Settings

You will find that many of the settings also have an Enforce check-box, this can do 1 of 2 things:

1. Disable changing the setting and grey it out
2. Allow changing of the setting, but it will be reverted when LibreOffice next starts up.

If you choose not to Enforce settings they will act as a default unless the user has specified an alternative value, similar to Group Policy Preferences.

Unfortunately, LibreOffice makes it difficult to know how settings are enforced.

Multi-value Settings

Some settings such as Trusted Path Locations may have multiple values, you have to be very careful setting these settings as if you do not enter in the value correctly they will not be correctly applied. The following rules need to be followed:

1. LibreOffice uses spaces to split values
2. Replace the spaces you want to keep with %20
3. File Paths need to begin with file:///

For example, say you want to add the following directories as trusted paths:

1. S:\macro documents\safe
2. S:\shared

You will need to enter the value in the group policy as:

 file:///S:/Macro%20Documents/safe file:///S:/shared

Discouraged Scenarios

Sometimes it's better to avoid Group Policy in some scenarios. Some issues can be better tackled at installation time or via other configuration methods.

User Data

If you want to pre-fill the User Data section of LibreOffice, using Group Policy is not a good option for user specific details, you should enable the LDAP pre-fill.

Quickstater

If you wish to disable the LibreOffice quickstater, that can be done at installation time with the following msi flag:

 ADDLOCAL=ALL REMOVE=gm_o_Quickstart

Online Update

If you wish to disable the Online updater, that can be done at installation time with the following msi flag:

 ADDLOCAL=ALL REMOVE=gm_o_Onlineupdate

Contributing

Right now this Group Policy is very limited in the settings it configures, if you would like to help out this page goes over how to edit a custom group policy.