How to disable a Microsoft Office menu item or toolbar icon

If you use Group Policy, this is easy. Here’s how:

  1. Open the application in question (it was MS Word for me). Hit Alt-F11 to open the VBA window. If you have not opened this before, do not be overwhelmed by the looks of it; our task is simple.

  2. Open the Immediate Window from the View menu.

  3. Paste this code, and change it to exactly match the menu item that is to be disabled. Make sure you have any punctuation.

    ? commandbars("menu bar").controls("**file**").controls("**save as...**").id

  4. When you have typed that, hit Enter. You should see a number just below what you typed. Make a note of that, and close the VBA window.

  5. In the Group Policy editor, navigate to user configuration, Administrative Templates, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Disable items in user interface, custom. If you have not added the MS Word 2003 Administrative Template, you will need to do that first.

  6. Add the code to the this item.

  7. Close out of the GP editor, and wait for the policy update to propagate across the domain. You can force propagation immediately on a workstation by typing “gpupdate” in the Run box or command line.

If this was helpful to you, please leave a comment below!