For a roll out of Office 2010 we needed to set the default format when saving to Microsoft Project 2007 and not Microsoft Project 2010. This was the prevent any accidental file format issues with people still using Microsoft Project 2007. The rest of the Office 2007 formats such as Word, Excel, Visio, … have remained the same as in 2007 (in the case of Visio even the same as 2003).

We had already loaded the ADMX GPO templates for Office 2010 some and intend to set the default to Microsoft Project 2007. So we navigate to User Configuration => Policies => Administrative Templates: Policy definitions (ADMX files) retrieved from central store => Microsoft Project 2010

Where we find following options:

Funny we thought we’d find three options: Project 2010, Project 2007 and Project 2000-2003. Now what mpp format would that “Project” setting refer to? Microsoft Project 2007 or 2010? Well we checked the contents of the ADMX file proj14.admx which can be found, when using the central store that is, at:

\blog.demoSYSVOLblog.demoPoliciesPolicyDefinitionsproj14.admx

There we see the following:

Aha it’s the mpp format of Microsoft Project 2007 as indicated by MSProject.MPP.12. An entry for Microsoft Project 2010 doesn’t even exist. We quickly had a look at the proj12.admx (Microsoft Project 2007) and there the entries are exactly the same for that setting for “Save” policy.

It seems that even when the file formats is different between Microsoft Project 2007 and Microsoft Project 2010 they offer no way to easily identify what mpp format you’re setting it to in the GPO. Why they don’t offer Microsoft Project 2010 I don’t know. I guess their take is that you could leave it disabled in the GPO. Which is true but GPO setting are normally very unambiguous and you can explicitly set every option when you enable it, even the default when disabled. Perhaps they just forgot as they did not need this for the other office products in the Office 2010 release. I don’t know.

Anyway we tested this and indeed it set the default format for saving to Microsoft Project 2007. So all is well. Tip of the day: check the content of the ADMX file when in doubt.