Microsoft Office Groove has a nifty little hotkey. If you press shift twice, a dialog comes up to let you write a message. This is even more annoying than the accessibility sticky keys or filter keys dialog. And guess what, there is no way to disable the hotkey in the user interface! I haven’t found the place to do it at least.
I got so annoyed with this that I asked our internal IT support how to disable it. The answer was that you have to edit the registry.
Here are the instructions I got. And remember, all the normal disclaimers apply: It is dangerous to modify the registry if you don’t know what you’re doing! We are not responsible for any damage that may occur if you try to follow these instructions. With that out of the way, here’s the information you have been waiting for.
- Make sure that Groove is shut down
- Locate the path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Groove
- If this does not contain a sub key called InstaGroove, then create it
- For the InstaGroove key, create a new DWORD Value called DisableHotkey
- Set the value data to 1
- Start Groove and verify that pressing shift twice does not pop up the message any more
Really simple, right?
Interesting. I didn’t know about this “feature”, so I guess I haven’t been too bothered about it.
Nevertheless, thanks for letting me know how to disable it if it turns out to be a problem at some point.