How to Disable Microsoft Office 2016 Telemetry Quickly!

This is a quick tutorial on how to disable Office 2016’s Telemetry feature that is bundled with the suite for free! What a deal!

1. Download the required admin templates for Group Policy
2. Extract them anywhere (e.g. Desktop). (You can delete the files we don’t need later)
3. Go to admx and select en-US folder and all .admx files in the root directory of admx. (Screenshot here)
4. Go to %systemroot%\policyDefinitions and move all selected files and folders to that folder.
5. Open gpedit.msc and go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Office 2016 > Telemetry Dashboard
6. Disable or enable these Settings as shown below:
7. Turn on telemetry data collection = Disabled
8. Turn on privacy settings in Office Telemetry Agent = Enabled
9. Turn on data uploading for Office Telemetry Agent = Disabled

It should look like this below:

References:

• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f69cde72-689d-421f-99b8-c51676c77717%28v=office.16%29#agentpolicy
• https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530196.aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/02633470-396c-4e34-971a-0c5b090dc4fd