Configure Information Rights Management in Office 2010

Overview

You can lock down many settings to customize IRM by using the Office Group Policy template (Office14.adm) and Outlook Group Policy template (Outlk14.adm). You can also use the Office Customization Tool (OCT) to configure default settings, which enables users to change the settings. The OCT settings are in corresponding locations on the Modify user settings page of the OCT. In addition, there are IRM configuration options that can only be configured by using registry key settings. For a list of IRM settings, see Plan for Information Rights Management in Office 2010.

In Microsoft Outlook 2010, users can create and send e-mail messages that have restricted permission to help prevent messages from being forwarded, printed, or copied and pasted. Office 2010 documents, workbooks, and presentations that are attached to messages that have restricted permission are also automatically restricted.

As an Outlook administrator, you can configure several options for IRM e-mail, such as disabling IRM or configuring local license caching. You can also design custom IRM permissions for users, in addition to the default Do Not Forward permissions group. For more information, see Setting up Information Rights Management for Office 2010 in Plan for Information Rights Management in Office 2010.

For information about managing IRM in Office for Mac, see the Information Rights Management in Office for Mac 2011 Deployment Guide (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=212910).

Before you begin

Before you start deployment, review Plan for Information Rights Management in Office 2010 to determine which settings that you might have to configure for IRM.

The Office 2010 and Outlook 2010 templates and other ADM files can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. For more information about how to use the OCT, see Office Customization Tool in Office 2010.

Turn off Information Rights Management

You can turn off IRM for all Microsoft Office applications. To turn off IRM in Outlook 2010, you must turn off IRM for all Microsoft Office applications. There is no separate option to turn off IRM only in Microsoft Outlook.

To turn off IRM in Office 2010 by using Group Policy

1. In Group Policy, load the Office 2010 template (Office14.adm) and go to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2010\Manage Restricted Permissions.

2. Double-click Turn Off Information Rights Management User Interface.

3. Click Enabled.

4. Click OK.

Configure automatic license caching for Outlook

By default, Outlook 2010 automatically downloads the IRM license for rights-managed e-mail when Outlook synchronizes with Exchange Server. You can configure Outlook 2010 to prevent license information from being cached locally so that users must connect to the network to retrieve license information to open rights-managed e-mail messages.

To disable automatic license caching for IRM by using Group Policy

1. In Group Policy, load the Outlook 2010 template (Outlk14.adm) and go to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Outlook 2010\Miscellaneous.

2. Double-click Do not download rights permission license information for IRM e-mail during Exchange folder sync.

3. Click Enabled.

4. Click OK.

Enforce e-mail expiration

You can also use IRM to help enforce an e-mail expiration period that you configure for Outlook 2010. When a user specifies the number of days before a message expires with IRM enabled, the message cannot be accessed after the expiration period.

As an administrator, you can specify an expiration period for all Outlook e-mail messages in your organization. The expiration period is enforced only when users send rights-managed e-mail.

To configure an expiration period for e-mail messages by using Group Policy

1. In Group Policy, load the Outlook 2010 template (Outlk14.adm) and go to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Outlook 2010\ Outlook Options\Preferences\E-mail Options\Advanced E-mail Options.

2. Double-click When sending a message.

3. Click Enabled.

4. In the Messages expire after (days) box, enter a number of days.

5. Click OK.

Deploy rights policy templates

The IRM policy settings that are available in the Office Group Policy template (Office14.adm) can be configured to point to the location where the rights policy templates are stored (either locally or on an available server share).

To configure the IRM rights policy templates location in Group Policy

1. In Group Policy, load the Office 2010 template (Office14.adm) and go to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2010\Manage Restricted Permissions.

2. Double-click Specify Permission Policy Path.

3. Click Enabled.

4. In the Enter path to policy templates for content permission box, type the full path to the IRM permission policy templates.

5. Click OK.

See Also

Concepts

Plan for Information Rights Management in Office 2010