Rights Policy Templates refresh for MSIPC (and Office 2013/2016)
In the course of RMS troubleshooting, the RMS file and template cache in %localappdata%\Microsoft\MSIPC may be deleted or renamed. While the MSIPC directory will be recreated the templates may not be downloaded again for up to a week.
To force an immediate client template to refresh the steps I use I got from the blog post: Office 2013, AD RMS Client 2.x and Template distribution. There’s a bullet point labeled “Force AD RMS Client 2.x to download templates immediately.”
Close your Office applications (you may keep Lync/Skype running).
In the registry go to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\MSIPC\Server Name>” and delete the Template key.
Restart the desired Office application and the templates should get updated.
Note: Automated template distribution may not work if the server/cluster URL is not in the Local Intranet sites in the Internet Explorer settings.
Here’s a sample RMS client registry.