Help: How can I block web access in Office Help?

Jaysun · Post by **Jaysun** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 6:33 pm

A patron found a new hole allowing access to the open web on our "Special Database" computers (Access to subscribed databases & Microsoft Office). She thought her trick was so "nifty" that she told a couple other patrons how to do so.

I've found tricks to block many other "holes", but so far I'm at a loss on how to block this one: Open any Office application, go to Help and if "Clippy" shows up click Options and choose to disable Office Assistant. Now open Help again to get the Office Help window and search for "internet". Now, click on any of the topics that start with "WEB:". A web page then comes up that has a link to Microsoft's home page in the upper-right corner. From there patrons can get to just about any site.

BTW, this is with Office XP (2002)

Any ideas how to block this one?

Thanks,
Jason

Post by **Scott** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 7:12 pm

Use ManageIE, available free on our download page. This will prevent any form of IE form opening to a web page.

--Scott

Jaysun · Post by **Jaysun** » Tue Sep 27, 2005 6:09 pm

I tried both ManageIE and ManageIEAll and I still can access the open Internet via Microsoft Office Help. Doing the procedure I put in my first post does not open a web browser window, but actually shows the web in the MSOHELP application. There are no navigation buttons, but the MS homepage has a MSN search that can be used to get to other sites.

I did confirm that ManageIE was working because I could not open an IE window by any mean (and also no explorer windows with ManageIEAll)

Example screenshot:

Thanks,

Jason

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Post by **Scott** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 9:52 am

What version of Office are you using?

In Office 97 and Office 2003 this does not seem to work.

Would diabling the Office Help by removing the help (CHM) files be an option?

--Scott

Jaysun · Post by **Jaysun** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 2:21 pm

This is in Office XP (2002 SP3). Disabling help isn't an option since do need to use it to actually get help on using the Office applications.

Post by **Scott** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:38 am

If you want to prevent access to anything but your domain, you could use a proxy, or set up the IE proxy, to only allow browsing to specific web sites.

Here is a step by step from Andrew Mutch.
http://tech.tln.lib.mi.us/lockinie.htm

--Scott