Disable RMS/IRM in Outlook only

2011-06-30 by Administrator, tagged as erm, irm, microsoft, rms, security, software

Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) are supported by Microsoft Office since version 2003 out of the box. A whole bunch of Registry Keys allow you to configure the behaviour of the client application. If you do not want RMS to be used you can completely disable RMS inside MS Office. But what about only disabling it in Word and not in Excel?

Well, this is not possible out of the box but as a workaround you can disable GUI elements. This is done with IDs and since a new ID was added with Office 2010 here is what you need to set for Outlook 2010 (works for 2007, too - haven't checked 2003) 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\DisabledCmdBarItemsList]
"TCID1"="9925"
"TCID2"="14954"
"TCID3"="14955"
"TCID4"="15831"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\DisabledCmdBarItemsList]
"TCID1"="9925"
"TCID2"="14954"
"TCID3"="14955"
"TCID4"="15831"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\DisabledCmdBarItemsList]
"TCID1"="9925"
"TCID2"="14954"
"TCID3"="14955"
"TCID4"="15831"
"TCID5"="20441"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\DisabledCmdBarItemsList]
"TCID1"="9925"
"TCID2"="14954"
"TCID3"="14955"
"TCID4"="15831"
"TCID5"="20441"

12.0 is Office 2007
14.0 is Office 2010

TCID1-4 are Office 2007 and 2010,
TCID5 is Office 2010 only and the
Wow6432Node is for 32-bit applications (e.g. Office) running on a 64-bit OS

Hope this helps.