What is Group Policy?

   Group Policy is how Microsoft refers to Windows Registry configuration settings, from an IT point of view. If you own your own computer you might adjust settings or use various Registry tweaks. If you work as an employee in a large corporation there will be IT staff. Those IT people will configure and adjust settings for everyone. Group Policy just refers to configuring 3,000+ Registry settings. In order to make that job easier for IT people, Pro versions of Windows come with a program known as the Group Policy Editor that allows IT people to configure computers on the network without having to actually deal with the Registry directly.

   So Group Policy Editor (GPE) is basically a massive Registry tweak front-end. But it's not available on Home versions of Windows. And there's no help file for GPE. There is a help file for "Group Policy Management Console", but it's of no practical value, offering only a vague outline of how to use Group Policy on servers. Microsoft also offers an Excel spreadsheet listing Group Policy settings. Why Excel? It's not really readable. 3,000+ settings listed in a spreadsheet! And without any indication of the possible settings values. Why not a help file? Who knows? Presumably it's just routine obfuscation, to keep the information from non-IT people.

A Group Policy CHM Help File

   The download here is a help file. You might say it's the missing help file. A CHM help file that details Group Policy settings, or Windows Registry tweak settings. It includes an index and search capability. It also includes a Favorites panel to store often used topic links. (All help files can have Favorites, but few programmers bother to do it.)

   While the GPE is only available on so-called Pro Windows versions, the settings are all just plain old (and some new-ish) Registry settings that anyone can use. You just have to know what they are and how to set them. The download here includes a CHM help file for Group Policy as well as VBScripts that can be used to create your own help file. You could then add to or edit any of the help topics and recompile. You could also create a help file for a different Windows version. For instance, if you want Win7 settings help and don't need Win10, you could download the GP "templates" for Win7 and build a help file from that.

Creating the Group Policy CHM Help File

   Microsoft offers downloads of "Administrative Templates" periodically. For example the Win7 version is here and the Win10 version from April 2018 is here. The Group Policy help file in the download below is based on May, 2020 templates - Win10 update 2004. Those templates are a large collection of XML-formatted files and string resource files meant to go with GPE. They specify settings values in the Registry, what the settings mean, what Windows versions a setting applies to, and they provide descriptions about those settings. The files are not readable by themselves. The XML content is a sorry mess that must be parsed.

   What's been done here is to create a number of VBScripts to do that. One script parses all the templates and creates readable HTML files for the settings. Several other scripts are included that do most of the work of creating a CHM help project. So you can use the CHM file provided or you can create your own. Instructions are included. There are a number of steps required, but it's not difficult.

Download Group Policy Help Package (1.6 MB)

Requirements

   There are no special requirements for this help file. CHM help files can be used on any Windows version. But if you want to compile your own help file you will need the free Microsoft HTML Help Workshop. It's a small download and a small program. The Help Workshop isn't really a workshop. It's not much more than a compiler for CHM files. That's why the scripts are needed to automate creation of the help file. Building a help file from scratch is a very tedious job.

Sample

Below is a sample page from the Group Policy help file. It shows the Registry key, value, possible settings, description, and supported Windows version. (Or in this case, IE version.) This sample shows the setting for tracking your location in IE. It's a good example of how important the settings explanations are. Note the double negative: Enabling the setting blocks tracking!

InternetExplorer - GeolocationDisable Both\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Geolocation Value Name: PolicyDisableGeolocation Enabled: 1 Disabled: 0 Description: This policy setting allows you to disable browser geolocation support. This will prevent websites from requesting location data about the user. If you enable this policy setting, browser geolocation support is turned off. If you disable this policy setting, browser geolocation support is turned on. If you do not configure this policy setting, browser geolocation support can be turned on or off in Internet Options on the Privacy tab. Supported on: IE9