Group Policies

[Guest]

The company I work for is busy migrating to an Exchange/Outlook 2003
environment from a Novell/GroupWise one. I have been asked to investigate
enforcing Group Policies in Outlook. Rather specific things that need to be
locked down and enforced. I have the Office Resource Kit and have gone
through most of the stuff on the Microsoft site. Is there any place I can
find out how to do very specific things with Group Policies in Outlook?

This is a preliminary list of things I need to be able to enforce.

Remove stationery
Remove junk mail folder
Remove Favourites
Remove Navigation buttons & make Folder List the default view
Remove Journal from folder list
Remove Public Folders from folder list
Remove Junk email from folder list
Remove default search folders
Prevent opening web pages in Outlook - force it to launch IE
Preview Pane - default position set to bottom
Show full menus
Remove Data File management

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers
Louis

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Most of those cannot be done with simple group policies and some can't be done at all. Comments inline.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

The company I work for is busy migrating to an Exchange/Outlook 2003
environment from a Novell/GroupWise one. I have been asked to investigate
enforcing Group Policies in Outlook. Rather specific things that need to be
locked down and enforced. I have the Office Resource Kit and have gone
through most of the stuff on the Microsoft site. Is there any place I can
find out how to do very specific things with Group Policies in Outlook?

This is a preliminary list of things I need to be able to enforce.

Remove stationery

There are several other steps you need to take:

1) Create a NewStationery value in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\MailSettings key and leave it blank to prevent users from choosing any default stationery. You can create a new .adm file if you want to add that to the group policy editor.

2) Use the group policy editor to disable certain toolbar commands in both Outlook and Word. The article at http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/46342/46342.html explains how.

Outlook

Actions | New Message Using More Stationery 5611

Word

Format Background 30403
Format Theme 3623
Format | Background Standard Colors 3224
Format | Background More Colors 2857
Format | Background Fill Effects 2858
Format | Background Printed Watermark 4003
View HTML Source 3902

Prevent opening web pages in Outlook - force it to launch IE
Remove Data File management

Use the same technique to disable the related toolbar commands. If you don't want to write your own code to recurse the Explorer.CommandBars
and Inspector.CommandBars collections to get the IDs that you need to be able to disable certain toolbar and menu commands, you can use either the CommandBars
Browser or Outlook Spy tools listed at http://www.outlookcode.com/d/vb.htm#tools

Remove Navigation buttons

I don't think know about this one. I doubt that it's possible to do as a policy, but I'm pretty sure you could capture it with the Office Profile Wizard and figure out the registry value from there (or with your favorite registry monitoring tool).

make Folder List the default view

Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\WunderBar

Value name: BootModule

Value type: REG_DWORD

Value: 0 to show the Mail folders, 5 to show the Folder List, and 6 to show the Shortcuts pane. (The Shortcuts pane needs to have the Inbox folder in it, if the Inbox is the user’s startup folder.)

Show full menus

In the Office 2003 administrative template -- Tools | Customize | Options / Always show full menus

Remove default search folders

Not possible with a policy. Probably possible with a script that runs after Outlook starts.

Preview Pane - default position set to bottom
Remove junk mail folder
Remove Favourites
Remove Journal from folder list
Remove Public Folders from folder list
Remove Junk email from folder list

Not possible.