AD RMS and Office: The Case of the Missing IRM Option
Shortly after upgrading RMS to AD RMS, Microsoft Office was installed on a client. Opening Word or Excel, going to the file tab, and selecting the info section does not seem to have the IRM functionality.
Where’s my “Restrict Permission by People?”
The Office SKU was the correct one to create protected content. There did not seem to be anything amiss. Finally started looking for the applicable registry entries on the client and stumbled on the culprit. It was discovered that HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Drm had Disable set to 1.
Group Policy Shenanigans
Some entity created an Office GPO that disabled AD RMS in all applicable Office applications.
This is a user configuration setting in group policy. In the Office settings it is Manage Restricted Permissions\Turn off Information Rights Management user interface. Setting this from Enabled to Disabled and applying to the client restores the functionality.
Back to Normal
After fixing the policy and restarting Word the menu returned.
