How to enable or to disable the instantiation point of a specific COM category in an Office 2003 Service Pack 3 program

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Introduction

This article introduces a new feature in Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3). This feature lets administrators and users set registry keys in order to enable or to disable the instantiation point of a specific COM category in an Office 2003 SP3 program. For example, you can use this feature in Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Web Components, or Microsoft Office Excel.

Note This feature exists only in Office 2003 SP3.

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More information

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

Enable or disable the new feature

By default, this new feature is disabled in Office 2003 SP3. To enable this feature, the following registry key can be set in the domain policy:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Security Value

Value Name ComCatCheck
Value Type REG_DWORD
Default Value None

If this key is not set, users can set the following equivalent key for Office 2003:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Security

Value Name ComCatCheck
Value Type REG_DWORD
Default Value 0

Note The default value of 0 means that the feature is disabled. The default value of 1 means that the feature is enabled.

Four categories are currently defined. For each category in Office 2003, there is a core domain policy category key as follows:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\COM Categories\CATID_ExcelCreateRTD

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Access\Security\COM Categories\CATID_OWCSafeProviders

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateLink

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateOCX

If these keys are not set, users can set the following equivalent keys for Office 2003:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\COM Categories\CATID_ExcelCreateRTD

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Access\Security\COM Categories\CATID_OWCSafeProviders

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateLink

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateOCX

The respective category IDs for these four categories are defined in the following table.

Category Name	Category ID	Description
CATID_ExcelCreateRTD	{8F3844F5-0AF6-45C6-99C9-04BF54F620DA}	This category governs Excel RTD usage.
CATID_OWCSafeProviders	{A67A20DD-16B0-4831-9A66-045408E51786}	This category governs OWC Data Source Provider usage.
CATID_WordCreateLink	{CCA2DB40-1B36-4A75-9876-154F1312F3E0}	This category governs Word OLE Link insertion.
CATID_WordCreateOCX	{81535360-42BB-4EF8-BB89-F0EECE074556}	This category governs Word OCX insertion.

CheckType registry entry and CheckCatID registry entry

You can set the following registry entries in each category key.

CheckType

The

CheckType

registry entry can be set to determine whether to use the Allow list or to use the Deny list.

Value Name CheckType
Value Type REG_DWORD
Default Value 0
A value of 0 means that the deny list will be used. A value of 1 means that the Allow list will be used.

Note If you set the value of the

CheckType

registry entry to 1 for a category and if you do not specify an Allow list, all controls in that category will be disabled. If you set the value of the

CheckType

registry entry to 0 for a category and if you do not specify a deny list, all controls in that category will be enabled. These guidelines are true unless the

CheckCatID

registry entry is set and is not present.

CheckCatID

The

CheckCatID

registry entry can be set to determine whether the category of the COM component must be checked.

Value Name CheckCatID
Value Type REG_DWORD
Default Value 0

A value of 0 ignores the COM Category of the component. A value of 1 allows for COM components only in the specified category.

Allow lists and Deny lists

Allow lists

The Allow lists for four categories reside in the following locations:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\COM Categories\CATID_ExcelCreateRTD\Allow

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Access\Security\COM Categories\CATID_OWCSafeProviders\Allow

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateLink\Allow

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateOCX\Allow

Deny lists

The Deny lists for four categories reside in the following locations:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\COM Categories\CATID_ExcelCreateRTD\Deny

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Access\Security\COM Categories\CATID_OWCSafeProviders\Deny

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateLink\Deny

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\COM Categories\CATID_WordCreateOCX\Deny

You can add a class identifier (CLSID) to the Allow list or to the Deny list. For example, to add CLSID {8BD21D40-EC42-11CE-9E0D-00AA006002F3} to the CATID_ExcelCreateRTD Allow list, you can create the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\COM Categories\CATID_ExcelCreateRTD\Allow\{8BD21D40-EC42-11CE-9E0D-00AA006002F3}

You can add a CLSID to a specific category. For example, to add CLSID {8BD21D40-EC42-11CE-9E0D-00AA006002F3} to the CATID_ExcelCreateRTD category, you can create the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8BD21D40-EC42-11CE-9E0D-00AA006002F3}\Implemented Categories\{8F3844F5-0AF6-45C6-99C9-04BF54F620DA}

Note The respective category ID for the CATID_ExcelCreateRTD category is {8F3844F5-0AF6-45C6-99C9-04BF54F620DA}.

For more information about implemented categories, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682451.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms692674.aspx

When you add a CLSID to a specific category for 32-bit applications on a 64-bit platform, you can use the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{CLSID}\Implemented Categories\{CategoryID}

For more information about how to use the Group Policy snap-in to specify policy settings for groups of users and for groups of computers, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742376.aspx

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