Disable Office 15 sync maintenance

Hello,

Our environment consists of 10 RDS (terminal servers) running Office 2013.  I'd like to not have the MSOSYNC and MSOUC run for our users as they do not connect to the Internet to sync files on remote servers. All work is stored on local servers on our LAN.

I'd like to know if there's some method/magic/voodoo to stop having the Microsoft Office 15 Sync Maintenance task from appearing in Task Scheduler.  As our users are load balanced on servers these tasks are loaded multiple times and remain there even if the user is not logged onto that RDS server.  This results in a slight drop in performance and also requires me as the administrator to go into the Task Scheduler of all these servers and delete these useless tasks every few days.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

March 25th, 2014 11:31am

I have the same issue on a single Citrix TS server. 

I just removed "user" access to the two files involved "MSOUC.EXE and MSOSYNC.EXE" and removed from all tasks from scheduled tasks. I will let you know if that worked. 

This article said just to delete but I don't want to do that. 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-office_storage/how-to-disable-microsoft-upload-center-2013/8bbc93e6-bc3b-4414-a1d3-9f37c3ed2d6e

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March 25th, 2014 9:45pm

Hi,

Try this:

Press Win + R, type "msconfig" in the blank box, press Enter.
Startup tab
Uncheck both Microsoft Office items (msosync.exe and msouc.exe) if they exist
Click OK
restart

If that doesn't work, the workaround can be used as to rename MSOSYNC.EXE and MSOUC.EXE to other names, then create two text files and rename them to "MSOSYNC.EXE" and "MSOUC.EXE". Actually this is not quite suggested when you need to Sharepoint or OneDrive for Business.

Thanks,

Melon Chen

Forum Support

March 26th, 2014 8:32am

Hi,

Just checking in to see if the information was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

Thanks,

Melon Chen

Forum Support

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March 31st, 2014 2:00am

Hi,

I'm marking the reply as answer as there has been no update for a couple of days.

If you come back to find it doesn't work for you, please reply to us and unmark the answer.

Thanks,

Melon Chen

Forum Support

April 3rd, 2014 7:46am

The suggestion of checking MSCONFIG didn't work because the tasks were not listed there. I'm attempting to change the permissions on the two files on one server to see if that makes a difference and ensure users do not get any errors.
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May 2nd, 2014 11:12am

Hi, have the same problem with MS Office 15 Sync task.

The same story with Optimize Start Menu Cache Files task.

Is there a way that prevents creation of these tasks for all users????

  • Proposed as answer by jtbailey Thursday, September 04, 2014 12:55 PM
  • Unproposed as answer by jtbailey Thursday, September 04, 2014 12:55 PM
September 2nd, 2014 7:05am

You can prevent the automated creation of tasks by users in Windows 2008 R2 in a Terminal Server/Citrix environment by modifying the security on the following folder:

C:\Windows\System32\Tasks

Remove the following groups: Authenticated Users and Creator Owner


You should leave the rest of the groups including Administrator.  This would not work if the users are logging on as Administrators though.
  • Edited by jtbailey Thursday, September 04, 2014 1:00 PM
  • Proposed as answer by jtbailey Thursday, September 04, 2014 1:01 PM
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September 4th, 2014 12:59pm

Has anyone done this via group policy?  The issue I have is setting up the other accounts that should remain and not breaking them.

Example: https://msdirectoryservices.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/set-ntfs-folder-permissions-using-gpo/

August 24th, 2015 2:49pm

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