Using AD RMS with Microsoft Office 2003

Once your AD RMS infrastructure is in place, users in your organization can begin to protect documents and e-mail messages using AD RMS-aware applications, such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word.  This blog post is meant to provide you with resources for knowledge workers that would like to protect documents, if they are just getting started.  AD RMS is a server role that makes Information Rights Management (IRM) possible for Microsoft Office applications and the following links will show you how to use IRM in Microsoft Office 2003.

You can use IRM in Microsoft Outlook 2003 to protect e-mail messages.  For more information please read the following articles:

• The article Help protect confidential information in e-mail using IRM provides a detailed overview about what IRM is, its limitations, and how you can use it to protect messages in Microsoft Outlook 2003.
• The article Troubleshoot e-mail messages with restricted permission can help you troubleshoot issues with using IRM in Microsoft Outlook 2003.

You can also use IRM in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.  The following articles will show you how to use AD RMS in Office 2003:

• About Information Rights Management explains what IRM is, how to protect documents using IRM, and how to view protected documents.

The article Create content with restricted permission describes how to protect a Microsoft Office 2003 document using IRM and it also explores the different IRM options you can use to more closely control what recipients can do with the document.