Lync - Auto Disable the "Use Microsoft Exchange for Managing Personal Information"

[techgeek]

Hi all

I have been tasked with modifying a Lync setting for all of our users. Specifically, I need to enforce the disable of the 'Use Microsoft Exchange for Managing Personal Information' within Lync Preferences.

I have been trying to locate the exact value used in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Lync.plist with no success. I have even done a comparison of two states of the file using TextWrangler (a version of the plist file with this option enabled and another with it disabled). No difference! So, I then thought perhaps it was caching the option change (SavedApplicationState), but after rebooting and comparing the Lync pref file - no change.

Does anyone know where the heck Lync stores this particular value?

Many thanks.

[AVmcclint]

I wonder if this setting is wrapped up in the database files that are new to Office 2016 that hold preferences. I looked in ~/Library/Application Support as well as the ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9 folders and couldn't find any other plists that are specific to Lync. I looked in the plist files I could find that related to Outlook or even just "office" generically with no luck.

[techgeek]

Yep, it is hidden quite well isn't it? ;-)

I have even tried using fseventer to see if I can work out which file(s) are being modified but I couldn't see anything there either. But I know fseventer is now pretty much unreliable since the last few macOS releases. I'm not aware of any alternative tool that could be used to show exactly which files have been modified in realtime.

My next point of call is to use Composer and do a detailed before/after states. (sighs) Seems so unnecessary to find out the location of this particular option, but will try to find it that way. Probably won't have time to do that until some point next week.