How to disable Office Timeline’s usage data transmission

Overview

The Office Timeline add-in may collect anonymous usage data of the application in a form that does not personally identify you. This data is transmitted to a secure web service running on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform over HTTPS and is limited to system and application information that is relevant to how Office Timeline is being used and how it performs. We use this data in aggregate to optimize products and improve services. You can opt out of usage data transmission at any time through the Office Timeline Settings menu. Here’s how:

Steps

  1. Start PowerPoint with Office Timeline and select Settings from the Office Timeline ribbon.

    office-timeline-settings-button-ribbon

  2. In the General tab of the Settings menu, uncheck the “Send usage data” dialog box under Application.

    disable-usage-data-transmission

Note: System administrators can disable usage data transmission with a registry key. More information about registry key settings can be found here.

Diagnostics Data Exchanged with Office Timeline

When support is needed, the users are asked to generate a diagnostics file using the tool "Send diagnostics data to Office Timeline". The content of the file can easily be inspected by the users before sending it to Office Timeline.

The diagnostics data collected may differ based on support needs, but it generally contains the following:

  • system hardware information
  • operating system information
  • Office version and service pack level
  • VSTO information
  • .NET Framework information
  • list of other add-ins installed (required to detect whether Office Timeline conflicts with any other add-ins)
  • Office Timeline log.