Share Settings

Shared settings are those Macabacus settings that can be set by an administrator for use by all Macabacus users in an organization, in order to facilitate uniformity in the formatting of materials produced across your organization, and to standardize the Macabacus experience for all users. Shared settings may include certain Macabacus settings which are applicable to specific Office applications, and Macabacus settings common to all Office applications. Not all Macabacus settings are eligible for sharing, as some Macabacus tools should always be customizable by end-users.

Before sharing settings, customize the settings you intend to share as desired on your computer; your local settings are what will be shared with others. Then, publish your settings as follows:

1. Open the Share Settings (Enterprise Settings in Macabacus v8 and earlier) dialog by clicking the Macabacus > Settings > Share button in Excel, PowerPoint, or Word.
2. Check the boxes next to the settings you want to share. Keep in mind that end users without administrator privileges cannot modify settings shared with them.
3. Verify that the Publish Destination (cloud or shared network/cloud folder) is set as desired. If not, see the guidance below.
4. Click the Publish Now button.

The next time your users start Excel, PowerPoint, or Word, Macabacus will automatically download shared settings from the server and overwrite users' local settings.

The easiest way to share Macabacus settings across your organization is to publish them to the cloud, where they are stored on Macabacus' server. Shared settings do not contain sensitive information, so there should be no security or privacy considerations with publishing to the cloud. Shared settings can alternatively be published to a shared network or cloud (e.g., OneDrive, Dropbox) folder. If you are using Macabacus v9 or later, you will note that you cannot change this option in the Share Settings dialog. Rather, you change this setting in the Configuration > Share Settings section of your Admin Console.

A shared cloud folder is a folder used by cloud storage services like OneDrive and Dropbox. A OneDrive example is C:\Users\John Doe\OneDrive - MyCompany\Software\Macabacus . Of course, this path is not accessible to other users, so you must replace the "root" portion of the path with the %CLOUD_FOLDER% placeholder. In our example, we would specify %CLOUD_FOLDER%\Software\Macabacus as the shared settings location. On Jane Doe's computer, this will resolve to C:\Users\Jane Doe\OneDrive - MyCompany\Software\Macabacus .

If you are using v8 or earlier and want to publish shared settings to a shared network folder, the process is more technically involved and may require involving an IT professional. Select the Publish to Network option in the Enterprise Configuration dialog. If you are publishing shared settings for the first time, or Macabacus cannot find an existing shared settings configuration file, clicking the Publish Now button will generate a shared settings configuration file (an XML file) on your computer. The path to this file will be shown in the Enterprise Configuration dialog. Move this file to a network location accessible to all Macabacus users and update the path in the Enterprise Configuration dialog using the Browse button

Once you have moved the shared settings configuration file to an appropriate network location, the end users' computers need to know where the file is located. This is accomplished via a registry key—shown in the Registry section of the Enterprise Configuration dialog—that instructs Macabacus where to find the configuration file. This registry key must be replicated on each Macabacus user's computer. The next time users start Office applications for which Macabacus is installed, Macabacus will automatically import shared settings from the path specified in the registry if there is an update. Upon closing the Enterprise Configuration dialog, this registry key will be created/updated on the administrator's computer.

When updating shared settings, the existing configuration file will be replaced with the new information. As long as the path to the file has not changed, you do not need to update the registries of your users. If you need to change the location of or rename the shared settings configuration file, click the Browse button to locate the file and close the dialog to update the registry on your local machine. Then, distribute this registry change to other computers on your network.

After making changes to settings that you share, open the Share Settings dialog, verify that the updated settings you intend to share are still checked, and click the Publish Now button. The new settings will overwrite those that were previously shared.

To unpublish settings, uncheck the desired boxes in the Share Settings dialog and click the Publish Now button.

If your organization has a small number of Macabacus users and limited IT support, and publishing to the cloud is not possible because your users have individual subscriptions, you can share Macabacus settings across your organization by configuring Macabacus on a single PC, then export your settings to an XML file. Email this file to other Macabacus users with instructions to import settings from this file. Note that users will not be prevented from making changes to these settings and are not required to implement them.

_{This documentation refers to the latest Macabacus version. Some features and descriptions of these features may not apply to older versions of Macabacus. Update your Macabacus software to take advantage of the latest features.}