Quickly finding your settings

For the purposes of modifying an existing setting within a GPO, it would make all kinds of sense if there was a way to edit the GPO and force the Group Policy Management Editor to take you directly to that particular policy setting, so that you could simply make the change. Unfortunately, this common sense does not translate into functionality within GPMC; rather, what you will soon discover is that any time you edit any GPO, the Management Editor will bring you to the root of all policy settings. You are left on your own to find the settings that you want to manipulate. When you are building out new settings that don't already exist in the GPO, this usually means you are hitting your favorite internet search engine in order to find the exact location. However, there is a shortcut available to use if you are only interested in changing an existing setting. You are already familiar with the Settings tab inside GPMC, where it shows you a quick layout of all settings within a GPO. By opening the Settings tab side by side with the Group Policy Management Editor, you can use the information shown on the Settings screen to quickly navigate to the proper location inside of your Group Policy Object.

For example, at the end of this section, we are going to update a password setting in the Default Domain Policy. You can see in the following screenshot that I have opened the Settings tab of that policy inside GPMC, and I am using the information displayed to find the location inside the editor that I need to navigate to, in order to make my changes: