Locking Down an Office Configuration

When to Lock Down an Office Configuration

Organizations might have several reasons for wanting to lock down a particular configuration of Office 2000. The following scenarios illustrate just a few.

Keep important information accessible

If your organization has a high employee turnover rate, you might not want your employees to add password-protection to their files. When you replace someone, your new employee probably needs ready access to all the previous user’s files — without having to worry about lost or forgotten passwords. Disabling password-protection helps guarantee that important customer information is always accessible.

Reduce support costs

If you are training employees who are computer novices, you can raise everyone’s confidence level instantly by locking down a uniform configuration of Office and disabling all user customization until your workforce becomes more skilled. Imposing default Office settings in this situation can help reduce your training and support costs.

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Create a consistent user environment

If you have shifts of employees sharing the same computers, you can make the transitions easier for your users by locking down a consistent user interface on every computer. By establishing the same computer interface for everyone, you don’t have to worry about reconfiguring the user interface before every shift change.

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Limit the potential distractions of the Internet

Office 2000 includes a number of built-in hyperlinks to sites on the World Wide Web where users can get more information about features of Office 2000. However, if your users don’t normally use the Internet for their work duties, you might not want to distract them with opportunities to browse the Web. You can disable Web connections in Office 2000 to help keep your users focused on their work.