SOLVED: Script and GPO To Disable Backstage When Saving In Office 2016

If you want to disable Backstage View when saving in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, … you can set it with a Group Policy Object (GPO), a script or manually

HOW TO DISABLE OFFICE BACKSTAGE MANUALLY:

To disable the Backstage View manually, just click:

FILE > OPTIONS > SAVE > and check “Don’t show the Backstage when opening or saving files”.  

This has to be set for each person, in every profile, on every machine.  That can be a lot of work so you may want to use a script or a GPO.  The problem is there is no GPO for the Backstage view when saving.  Fortunately, there is a registry entry as such you CAN easily create a GPO to push that registry setting.

SCRIPT TO DISABLE OFFICE BACKSTAGE:

If you want to disable the Office Backstage using a script, you can use the following the registry entry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\General]
“SkipOpenAndSaveAsPlace”=dword:00000001

GPO TO DISABLE OFFICE BACKSTAGE:

If you want to disable the Office Backstage view using a GPO:

1. Open the Group Policy Management Editor
2. Expand USER CONFIGURATION > PREFERENCES > WINDOWS SETTINGS > REGISTRY
3. Right click and select NEW
4. Set the HIVE to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
5. Set the PATH to SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\General
6. Set the NAME to SkipOpenAndSaveAsPlace
7. Set the VALUE TYPE to REG_DWORD
8. Set the VALUE DATA to 1 (Decimal)
9. Click OK and close your Group Policy Management Editor
10. Go to your test PC and run GPUPDATE /FORCE (or reboot)