I love technology, however, when someone forgets to add very simple comments, it drive me crazy.

Today, I needed to figure out how to add a Custom Tab onto Microsoft’s Office Communicator 2007 R2.

According to the documentation provided by Microsoft, it is a very simple process

Configuring Context-Sensitive Custom Tabs
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb963929.aspx

Step 1: Define the Registry Setting – Adjusting the registry
Step 2: Creating the Custom Tab Definition Files – Creating an XML file

Now, Step 2 was the easiest, since they have a good example on the format of the XML file.

However, Step 1 was the most troublesome, since the instructions tell you to navigate (using regedit.exe) to the following locations within your computer registry in order to create an entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator

Very straight forward instructions, however, what they forget to tell you

NOTE: the above path might not exist.

At first, I blamed my Windows 7, but then I contacted a coworker that has Windows Vista and he said the path did not exist for him either.

Hence, the only thing that came to mind was to create the entries manually. At first I was very hesitant to manually create a new key, since I did not want to crash my computer. However, what is the worst that could happen? (OS rebuild)

So, I navigated to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft

1. Created a new “Key” and named it “Communicator”
2. Created a new “String Value”  and named it “TabURL” with the location of the XML file (Step 2) which I hosted on IIS. (See Image OC1 below)
3. Exited Office Communicator
4. Launched and Signed In ont Office Communicator
5. Done (See Image OC2 below)

If Microsoft reads this post, please make sure to adjust your documentation, since this omission causes a lot of unnecessary research and frustration when trying to customize Office Communicator 2007 R2.