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Enabling Intune’s “Disable Audio Search for user” policy turns OneNote Audio Search off for the targeted users. It does not enable searching. To let users search spoken words in recordings, leave this disable policy unconfigured or remove its assignment, then let each user enable the OneNote option under File > Options > Audio & Video.
The policy name and Settings Catalog location below are documented by a third-party Intune walkthrough, while Microsoft documents the OneNote feature and the general catalog workflow. Check the setting in your tenant and Office build before broad deployment.
What OneNote Audio Search does
OneNote Audio Search indexes spoken words in audio and video recordings so a user can search for a word and jump to the recording location where it was spoken. Microsoft’s support guidance covers Microsoft 365, OneNote 2024, OneNote 2021 and OneNote 2016. In the desktop app, the user-facing control is File > Options > Audio & Video, in the Audio Search section. Microsoft says the option is off by default because it slows searching: Microsoft’s OneNote search documentation.
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| Control | Where it appears | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Enable searching audio and video recordings for words | OneNote desktop: File > Options > Audio & Video | Turns Audio Search on for that user, subject to the policy applied to the device or account. |
| Disable Audio Search for user | Intune Windows Settings Catalog, under OneNote > Audio and Video (reported by the August 1, 2025 walkthrough) | When the policy is enabled, blocks Audio Search for users in its assignment. |
Do not describe an enabled Intune policy as enabling Audio Search. “Enabled” describes the disable instruction, not the feature.
What you need before creating the profile
- An Intune role that can create and assign Windows configuration policies.
- Windows devices and OneNote installations that are in the scope you intend to manage. Microsoft’s feature article is not a compatibility matrix for the Intune policy, so test the target Office edition, update channel and Windows release first.
- A pilot user or group. A user-scoped policy can affect the person on more than one managed device, whereas a device-scoped assignment follows the device; use the scope that matches your governance requirement.
- The expected OneNote build available on the pilot device. The exact policy mapping has been reported by secondary sources, not confirmed in the Microsoft pages linked above.
Intune’s Settings Catalog is searchable and exposes filters, including user or device scope where the platform supports them. Microsoft’s catalog procedure is described at Create a policy using settings catalog in Microsoft Intune. Portal labels can change, so search for the setting name rather than relying on a permanently fixed click path.
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Create the OneNote disable policy in Intune
- Open the Intune admin center. Go to the Windows configuration-policy area and start creating a new policy. Select the Windows platform and the Settings Catalog profile type when those choices are presented in your tenant.
- Name the profile clearly. For example, use a name such as “OneNote Audio Search – disabled for pilot.” A descriptive name helps distinguish this profile from a profile intended to permit Audio Search.
- Add catalog settings. In the settings picker, search for
OneNote. Searching is more reliable than browsing every category because Microsoft can reorganize the catalog display. - Open the Audio and Video category. Locate the setting labeled exactly Disable Audio Search for user. The August 1, 2025 HTMD walkthrough places this setting in the OneNote Audio and Video area: HTMD’s walkthrough.
- Set the policy to Enabled. This is the counterintuitive step: enabling this setting instructs OneNote to disable Audio Search. Do not select Enabled if your goal is to make spoken-word searching available.
- Review the remaining settings. Avoid adding unrelated OneNote controls to the same profile unless you have a documented reason. Keeping the profile narrow makes conflicts easier to diagnose.
- Assign a pilot. Assign the profile to a small user or device group first. Confirm that the assignment matches the intended management scope and that no exclusion removes the test account.
- Review and create. Save the profile, then wait for the device or user to receive the policy. Use the profile’s per-setting and device/user status views to identify whether the setting is pending, succeeded or failed.
The Settings Catalog workflow itself is official Microsoft guidance; the exact OneNote setting name and category placement come from the secondary walkthrough. If your catalog search returns no matching setting, do not substitute a similarly worded control without testing it.
How to confirm that the policy took effect
Check Intune reporting first
Open the profile’s monitoring or per-setting status view and locate the pilot user or device. A successful profile-level result is useful, but the per-setting result is the important check: it shows whether the OneNote setting itself was applied. A pending result usually means the device has not checked in or synchronized yet; a failure requires reviewing the profile details and device management logs.
Check OneNote on the managed device
- Allow the device to synchronize with Intune, then restart OneNote so it reloads policy and application settings.
- Open File > Options > Audio & Video.
- Inspect the Audio Search option. With the disable policy enforced, the user should not be able to turn the capability on through the application preference.
- Test a search against a note containing an audio or video recording. The test should not return spoken-word matches while the disable policy is active.
The exact visual treatment of a policy-controlled checkbox can vary by OneNote build. Treat the Intune per-setting result as the authoritative management check and the OneNote screen as a functional confirmation.
Use local diagnostics only as supporting evidence
The secondary policy reference identifies the policy identifier L_Disableaudosearch and the registry value enableaudiosearch under an Office 16.0 OneNote policy key. These names are troubleshooting clues, not a guarantee that every Office edition writes the same hive, path or value. The reference is available in ADMX Viewer’s “Disable audio search” entry.
If you inspect the registry, record the Office version and policy path shown on the affected computer instead of assuming a universal path. Registry editing is not a substitute for correcting the Intune assignment. The HTMD walkthrough also points administrators to Device Management Enterprise Diagnostic Provider events in Event Viewer; it does not establish a universal event ID or a single event sequence for every Windows release.
Troubleshoot common deployment problems
The setting does not appear in the catalog
- Search the catalog for the complete phrase
Disable Audio Search for user, then try the shorter termsAudio SearchandOneNote. - Confirm that you selected a Windows Settings Catalog profile rather than a different policy template.
- Check the tenant’s available catalog settings and the Office build on the pilot device. Microsoft’s general catalog article does not promise that every Office policy is present in every tenant or release.
- Do not deploy an unverified registry workaround merely because a similarly named setting is missing. Validate the target build and policy definition first.
Intune reports success, but users can still search audio
- Verify that the affected account is actually in the assignment and not in an exclusion.
- Check whether another profile assigns a conflicting value. Consolidate overlapping OneNote policies or make the intended precedence explicit.
- Force a device or user sync, then close and reopen OneNote. An application that was running during policy delivery may not immediately refresh its effective settings.
- Confirm that you enabled the disable policy. Setting it to Not configured, or confusing it with the application’s “enable searching” option, produces the opposite result.
- Compare the OneNote build and update channel on the pilot with the build used for testing. The available UI and policy behavior may differ across editions and updates.
The policy shows an error
- Read the per-setting error details rather than relying only on the profile summary.
- Check the device’s last check-in time, enrollment state and assignment filters.
- Use Event Viewer’s Device Management Enterprise Diagnostic Provider channel for additional context, while treating event names and IDs as build-dependent.
- If you inspect the registry, compare the reported
L_Disableaudosearchandenableaudiosearchnames with the policy definition for that Office installation. A missing value does not by itself prove that Intune failed; policy processing may be blocked earlier.
Allow Audio Search again
To restore spoken-word searching, remove the disable policy from the user or device, or change the setting to Not configured and let the assignment update. After synchronization and an OneNote restart, the user can open File > Options > Audio & Video and enable searching audio and video recordings for words. If another assigned profile still enables “Disable Audio Search for user,” removing only one assignment will not restore the feature.
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Scope, support and evidence limits
Microsoft’s OneNote article establishes what Audio Search does, where the end-user option is located and why it starts off. Microsoft’s Intune article establishes the searchable Settings Catalog workflow. The exact OneNote policy name, its Audio and Video category, the claim that enabling it disables the feature, and the registry clues are reported by secondary sources. The HTMD article was published August 1, 2025; its implementation details should be checked against the current tenant and Office build before production rollout.
The available material does not establish that this policy behaves identically across every Office edition, Windows release, update channel, or management scope. Record the tested Office and Windows versions, assignment type, and OneNote result in your change documentation. A small pilot is the safest way to determine whether your environment honors the setting before assigning it broadly.
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