Modifying Default Mail Message Form

[dmanyooper]

I am a location running the Outlook 2003 Professional client accessing an
Exchange 2000 server within a corporate Exchange Domain environment.

My location would like to eliminate the ability for all of our users to have
access to the "Reply All" functionality. I have used the Outlook help and
have been able to see how to create a custom form that allows this to happen,
but would like to be able to change the default message form or template for
all of my users.

Does anyone know what can be done? Can this be setup for only my location
or is it something that would be changed in the entire corporation Exchange
environment?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

This cannot be done with a custom form. It would require a COM addin, which
would have to be installed on each user's machine.

 

[dmanyooper]

Sue - can you provide a little further detail on a COM addin, I guess I am a
novice? Is this something that can be obtained or developed (of course
cheaply, if my management is involved). We also use SMS and could possibly
distribute to our clients?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

COM add-ins are applications tightly integrated with Outlook that hook into
the events that fire when users interact with the Outlook UI or which things
happen in Outlook behind the scenes. Building them is not a task for
novices. But see http://www.outlookcode.com/d/comaddins.htm

Fortunately for you, my brain just kicked in with another potential
solution. You should be able to use group policy objects to disable the
command bar button for Reply to All. If you don't want to write your own
code to recurse the Explorer.CommandBars and Inspector.CommandBars
collections to get the right ID to use with that particular policy setting,
you can use either the CommandBars Browser or Outlook Spy tools listed at
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/vb.htm#tools

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers