SOLVED: How To Remove THIS SETTING IS MANAGED BY YOUR ORGANIZATION

If you find a Windows 10 or Office setting is grayed out and there is a THIS SETTING IS MANAGED BY YOUR ORGANIZATION notice (usually in red) there are ways to get around it.  For instance we recently documented Windows Hello PIN ADD Button is Greyed Out – THIS SETTING IS MANAGED BY YOUR ORGANIZATION.  But what if none of the fixes work for you?

One thing you can do is to remove ALL policies.  Fortunately nearly all policies are stored in the Registry which is relatively easy to work with.  Unfortunately, policies are kept in many different registry keys so it can be difficult to find them all.  To make this easier we have listed some of the most common policy paths here:

• Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies
• Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
• Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\System\CurrentControlSet\Policies

.

• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies
• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Policies
• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Policies
• Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Policies

You can look through each one of these locations and delete or edit them.

In practice, we have often just backed up the registry key in question (FILE > EXPORT…) and then just deleted the entire POLICIES key, rebooted and hoped for the best.  We have NEVER had a problem doing this, but it is a risky move and you should be careful doing it.