Prevent indexing of certain file types
- Policy ID
- ExcludedExtensionsMultiline
- Scope
- Computer Configuration
- Supported on
- Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 with Windows Search version 3.01, or any version of Microsoft Windows with Windows Search 4.0 or later
- Source
- Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 11 2026 Update (26H2) (version 1.0)
- Category
- Windows Components › Search
Description
Enabling this policy allows you to edit the list of file types to exclude from indexing. The end user cannot modify this list. You should separate each extension type with a semicolon.
Note that limitations of Group Policy Object Editor require this list to be split across multiple values. Desktop Search combines all these into a single exclusion list.
When this policy is disabled or not configured, the user can edit the default list of excluded file types. If you enable and then disable this policy, the user's original list is restored.
If you want to specify an initial default list of excluded file types that users can change later, see the administration guide for information about how to set up the initial machine preference.
Options
Registry
ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- ExcludedExtensionsMultiline0REG_SZ
- ExcludedExtensionsMultiline1REG_SZ
- ExcludedExtensionsMultiline2REG_SZ
- ExcludedExtensionsMultiline3REG_SZ