Prevent Outlook 2003 interface changes

C

cfharris95

I have a user (a professor) who is constantly having issues with
Outlook "changing" on him. Of course he claims not to have any idea
how this happens, but I know he is moving toolbars and columns around
without even realizing it. I just have a few questions hopefully
someone has some input.

1. I've never found that Outlook 2003 has a "lock toolbar" option or
something similar. This a huge oversight on MS's part, but is this
still true? What about 2000 or 2007? I do not remember seeing this on
either of them.

2. At one point I had found a post somewhere that suggested setting up
the interface the way you liked, and then setting the config files
that hold these settings to read-only. While this wouldn't prevent
changes, it would not save them either, so that if you closed and re-
opened Outlook it would go back to your saved settings. I tried this
and it seemed to work, but I am wondering if an update or service pack
since has overwritten them so they are no longer read only. The
problem is, I cannot find that post and I do not know which files
these were. I believe there were two of them. Does anyone know what
these might be?

3. The major issue right now is that he usually sorts mail by date or
by sender name. What appears to be happening is that he will click on
the column heading and drag it (like when you get the big X) which
then removes the column completely (another hideously annoying
feature). Is there ANY way to prevent this? The problem with features
like this I've found is that they are so easy to remove, yet so "hard"
to put back. Most people like this professor just can't remember the
steps to get the column back from the Field chooser.

4. I've looked briefly a bit at the Group Policy .adm templates in the
Outlook resource kit for anything preventing changes to the Outlook
UI, but I haven't seen anything specific. Is there anything like that
in the GPO's that would help? We do run AD so it would be easy to make
a policy just for him if that's possible.

If anyone has any input I would be greatly appreciative.

Thank You.

-Charlie Harris
 

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