Importing GPO | Settings from a File

Dear Intune Admin,

Systems Administrator’s should be familiar with the Microsoft Windows environment and how Group Policy generally works.  Group Policy will allow you to push out settings to multiple computers on an Active Directory domain network.  For this example, since we are working with multiple domains, you may be tasked to migrate some of these GPO settings from one to another.  Now you are probably asking yourself, how am I supposed to transfer GPO’s that had over 100+ configurations changed? There is a simple way through the Group Policy Management console that we can use!

Let us dive in!

Pre-Requisites


Ø  Domain Admin role

Ø  Access to GPO Management Console

Creating your GPO for New Domain

Step 1:  

Server Manager -> Tools -> Group Policy Management

Step 2:

“Create a GPO in this domain, and Link it here… “

Step 3:

Under “Group Policy Objects” - > “Right-Click” - > “Import Settings”

Step 4:
Once you are in the Import Settings Wizard, please navigate through the wizard until you get to the Backup Folder section that includes “Browse”.

Step 6:

The wizard will now show your GPO’s that have been populated into a readable format.

Note: Some GPO’s will have multiple versions and it is highly advised to tick below the “Show only the latest version of each GPO” to make sure you are receiving the most up-to-date configurations.

Step 7:

Continue through the wizard until you get to the end prompt.

Step 8:

You will now be at the end of the Import Settings Wizard and will be shown a summary and completion notice. Afterwards, you can check the Group Policy Management Console to see the changed settings.

Congrats! You have now successfully imported GPO settings from a file. If the location of the GPO files that are being read are in a central location such as SYSVOL, there should not be any issue with permissions.

Nicholas Seo