What does "DisableRobustifedUNC" registry entry do?

Question

_{Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:21 PM}

Greetings, I recently had a line of business I support at my company ask about this setting "DisableRobustifedUNC" and setting the value to 0 to enable the feature.

This seems to be an undocumented registry key and I cannot find any information about it anywhere outside Microsoft's social boards.  Can anyone tell me what this setting would do and if it's already enabled by default?

All replies (3)

_{Friday, January 4, 2019 9:52 AM ✅Answered}

Hi,

For this registry entry:

Important* 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.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\Options

Value name: DisableRobustifiedUNC  Value type: REG_DWORD  Enabled Value: 1

Disabled Value: 0

While the registry key is located in the Word hive, it actually applies to Outlook (and other Office applications) as well. While the effect of the registry key has not been publicly documented by Microsoft, the “Robustified UNC” feature affects the security mechanisms used when opening a file from or saving a file to a network share in Office applications. If you set value data of DisableRobustifiedUNC to 0, it will enable the Office applications to create temp files during opening a file from or saving a file to a network share. For the introduction of “Robustified UNC”, please refer to Robinson Zhang’s reply in this thread: Office 2007 saving documents over mapped network drive takes abnormally long.

In addition, I don’t see this registry entry created after Office is installed. As far as I know, the registry entry can be added manually, and the default value of it is 0. The feature “creating temp files during opening a file from or saving a file to a network share” is already enabled by default.

Hope it’s helpful. Anything unclear, feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,

Herb

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_{Wednesday, January 9, 2019 12:02 PM}

Hi,

Have you resolved the issue? Do you have any update for it? Please remember to mark the reply as answer if it helped. Thanks for your kind understanding.

Best Regards,

Herb

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].

Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Office 2019.

_{Wednesday, January 16, 2019 7:47 AM}

Hi John,

I am checking the status of this issue. Do you have any update for it?

If my reply is helpful to this question, please remember to mark it as answer. Your action would be helpful to other users who encounter the same issue and read this thread. Thanks for your understanding.

If you have any updates or questions on this, feel free to post back to let us know.

Best Regards,

Herb

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].

Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Office 2019.