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

Contributor Icon Contributed by shamanstears Date Icon August 24, 2009  
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.

Previous recipe | Next recipe |
 
  • 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...
  • mecheng
    What happens for non Outlook users?
  • great point - I'm sure this would be useless when accessing the protected message through web based mail.
  • kate_ol_team
    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
  • qdideas
    Kate: Thanks for visiting, but please don't abuse our comments.
  • anitarundell
    Hmmm, this must be different for Outlook users on Windows Vista? First of all, I don't see a Ribbon. Thoughts?
  • yanickg
    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.
blog comments powered by Disqus