HELP: admx/adm Office confusion

[kruthy]

I have 3 locations, two moving to Windows 7 and one that is going to remain on XP for now.

The Windows 7 locations are getting Office 2010, the XP location still has Office XP (old, I know).

I am confused about Group Policy adm/admx files. If I put the admx files in a central store on the domain sysvol as recommended and install the adm templates in the GPO, the settings won't work on the XP/Office XP location clients, will they? Do I need to run two different Office GPOs to accommodate this setup? That's hairy because I'm at a public library and all users login at each location the same way (user name: PUBLIC).

(I'd love to get the XP location up to Windows 7 but it just isn't in the cards for a few months.)

Thanks for any advice.

[kbeckman]

Yes, if you're going to still have XP clients, they will need to get the ADM policies. Anything Vista and up will need the ADMX policies.

The easiest thing to do would be to create two separate policies: one ADM and one ADMX. Then use a WMI filter to apply the AMD to Windows XP and another WMI filter to apply to Vista+.

[jeremym]

My feeling is that you should:

1. Create the central store. You can put the current ADMX files in there, including Office 2010 ADMX files.

2. When you create your GPOs for your Office XP machines, you can then right-click Import Template and "consume" the Office XP adms AS NEEDED. So, only use the Office XP ADMs as you need to.

This will get you the best of all worlds.

Hope this helps.