Bad news IT nerds, Group Policy in Office 365 ain’t gonna work unless you’re ready to pay up because you will need one of these plans or your SOL when it comes to applying GPO’s to your Office Suite:
- Office 365 ProPlus
- Office 365 Enterprise E3
- Office 365 Government E3
- Office 365 Enterprise E4
- Office 365 Government E4
- Office 365 Enterprise E5
“There’s no way Microsoft would screw me like that, for god’s sakes I bought their server O.S., their suite, and all their accouterment“. Oh boy, do you not know Microsoft, they’re business motto is “milk every cent” for christ sake.
Here’s a link to Microsoft’s own site where they show which plans support which features (scroll down and you’ll see Group Policy).
Yup, purchasing Office outright will give you all the capabilities you could want but by paying MORE for Office 365 you, in fact, get less. Good ole SAAS
Here’s the strange part though, I actually got a couple of my policies to work with some of the lesser plans. Excel and Word seemed to take several of my GPOs but for some reason Outlook wouldn’t. After some digging (as there is surprisingly little info about this) I found the truth…
Trump has Benjamin Button disease and is actually a hideous 14 year old and, possibly more relevant, GPOs for Office 365 don’t work on most O365 plans.
So what can I do to get my Group Policies to work in Office 365?
If you’ve already cutover and just discovered this issue and are sweating bullets, you’ve got a couple of options:
- Blame the executive who wanted “THE CLOUD” and tell them that you knew this was an issue the whole time and that you brought it up multiple times to deaf ears
- Try the GPO’s and hope some of them work and try workarounds for the others (scripts, registry edits, etc.)
- Upgrade to one of the more expensive plans
Long story short, Office 365 blocks group policy because they want you to pay up. It’s Microsoft at its most Microsoftiean
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