Prevent Reply All/Forward in mail to other Outlook users

Much has been made of Information
Rights Management in Outlook/Windows 2003. But for years,
organizations with 100% Outlook users have been capable of achieving a small level
of the same functionality with custom Outlook forms.

First, create the custom form:

1. Create a new message

2. Tools | Forms | Design This
Form

3. Click on the Actions tab

4. Double click on "Forward" and "Reply to All" and disable them

5. Click on the Properties tab

6. Check "Send form definition with item"

7. Tools | Forms | Publish Form As

8. In the "Look In" field, choose your personal forms library and give it a name such
as "NoReplyAllOrForward"

At step 7, you could also File | Save As and save the
form as an OFT in the filesystem.

Then, send mail to others using the custom
form:

1. Tools | Choose Form (or double-click
the OFT you saved on your hard drive)

2. In the "Look In" field, choose your personal forms library

3. A new mail message will come up. If you went to Tools | Forms | Design This Form,
the changes you made above would be visible.

4. Type in the recipients/subject/body/etc and send the message

Now when the people you sent the mail to open it, the
"Reply All" and "Forward" buttons will not be available on the toolbar. Similarly,
the keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+F will not work.

Of course this doesn't go nearly as far as true IRM,
since the recipient could still copy the contents from the mail and paste it into
a new one and forward that around. This is more useful as a "gentle reminder" not
to "me too" reply all to a large mailing list, or not to forward something semi-private.

Note: This tip only works if the recipients
are using Outlook. Outlook Web Access, Outlook Express and other mail clients don't
understand Outlook's custom forms.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  PingBack from http://www.keyongtech.com/4372215-is-there-an-option-to

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  KC's Prevent Reply All/Forward in mail to other Outlook users .

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2004
  This was extremely helpful. The steps were complete, precise, and had me quickly back to work. Thanks so much.

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2004
  This was helpful.
  
  Let me know can we make this as default whenever we send a new message

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2004
  Not so sure about this. I did exactly what the instructions said and I sent a test message to myself. Sure enough it worked when you opened the message (double clicking the message and bringing it up in it's own window) there were no reply to all or foward buttons. BUT if you just select the message and use the buttons on the top of the main Outlook window, it lets you foward or reply to all. hum...

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2004
  Yep, that's the expected behavior. The changes you make by following these steps only affect the message form, not the entire outlook window.