Outlook 2010: Prevent Other Outlook Recipients from Forwarding, Printing, or Copying Content from Your Message

Contributor Icon Contributed by Rob Rogers  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Outlook  

If you are sending out an email message to a contact and prefer that it isn’t forwarded to someone else, printed, or any of the content copied, Outlook 2010 allows you to do this by following these steps.

First, you need to sign up for Microsoft’s Information Rights Management (it’s free)

1. Go to the Ribbon and click New E-mail to compose a new message.

2. Go to the Ribbon, find the Permission section.

3. Click the Permission button.

4. The Service Sign-Up window will appear, select the Yes, I want to sign up for this free service from Microsoft radio button.

5. Click the Next button.

6. You will need a Windows Live ID to use this service, if you have on select the Yes, I have a Windows Live ID radio button. (if not, select the No, I want to register for a Windows Live ID now radio button. This will take you to a page to sign up for a Windows Live ID.)

7. Click the Next button.

8. Input the credentials to sign into Windows Live.

9. Select the proper radio button identifying whether you are using a private or a public computer.

10. Click the I accept button.

11. Click the Finish button.

To Mark a New Message as Do Not Forward:

1. Go to the Ribbon and click New E-mail to compose a new message.

2. Go to the Ribbon, find the Permission section.

3. Click the arrow beneath the Permission button.

4. Select Do Not Forward from the resulting menu.

5. Compose your email as usual and send it.

Recipients using Outlook will not be able to forward, print or copy content from the message.

 

11 Comments -


  1. HasanH007 said on August 25, 2009

    can you press printscreen and take a snap shot of the email as it is displayed? Then just print or forward that?

    nice idea though – will stop most users from printing and forwarding…

  2. Anonymous said on August 25, 2009

    What happens for non Outlook users?

  3. HasanH007 said on August 25, 2009

    great point – I’m sure this would be useless when accessing the protected message through web based mail.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2009

    Thanks for highlighting this exciting feature! I’m sure the folks over on the Office and Outlook Pages on Facebook would really appreciate you sharing your thoughts, tips, and tricks on the Walls! There are some cool videos…

    Editor: Spam Links Removed.

    Cheers,
    Kate
    MSFT Office Outreach Team

  5. Anonymous said on August 26, 2009

    Hmmm, this must be different for Outlook users on Windows Vista? First of all, I don’t see a Ribbon. Thoughts?

  6. Anonymous said on August 26, 2009

    This is a pretty pointless feature that will only stop the dumb computer users that don’t know anything about Windows and are also using the same version of Outlook (i.e. internal corporate mail environment). Anyone smart enough who really wants to copy your message will be able to by simply pressing printscreen or using 3rd party programs to take a screenshot as someone else also pointed out. Lotus Notes also has that feature and it’s as useless for the same reasons.

  7. Anonymous said on August 31, 2009

    Kate: Thanks for visiting, but please don’t abuse our comments.

  8. Alexw1000 said on June 17, 2011

    In the corporate environment particularly this is very useful to prevent casual forwarding by accident. People rarely read or adhere to taglines such as ‘Confidential, please to not forward’, so if they click the forward button and get a blank screen, they are reminded that this is not meant to be distributed more widely.
    This will not prevent anyone from maliciously spreading confidential information as the message can be retyped or photographed, but I don’t thik that is the intent.

    P.S. I think the Lotus Notes version was easier to use as it did not require sign up to a separate service.

  9. Shyambab30 said on June 21, 2011

    Thanks for good points…….

  10. Shyambab30 said on June 21, 2011

    Thanks for good points…….

  11. Anup john said on September 11, 2011

    kindly build the provision for restricting mail.

 

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment -