How to prevent users from saving emails as .msg?

[Mnereng]

Does anyone know of a way to prevent users from saving emails out of Outlook as an .msg file?  Either File-> Save As, or drag and drop...I'd be happy with either, but both would be great.

We have EV fully enabled, and PSTDisableGrow applied everywhere, but large quantities of people are circumventing it by saving .msg files to thier desktop.  Surely someone else has run into the same problem and come up with a soluiton?

[Liam_Finn1]

 If it is on the file servers and if you are running Windows 2003 R2 you can implement File Screening which will allow you to prevent the users saving *.msg files to their home drivers or any other shared network drive on that server

[Mnereng]

Yeah, I should have said that we already have that in place.  The real issue is at the desktop level.

[Liam_Finn1]

I don't know of a way to do it on a desktop without having to find a 3rd party tool that you install on the desktop.

The only thing i can think of is that you inform the users then add a task that runs each day that finds the .msg files and delete them

In some of our locations we have done this using Altiris to delete music files at the request of local management. The local IT once a week runs the Altiris script which will erase any .mp3 file on the PC's

I'm sure you could implement something similar on the desktop using Windows Task Scheduler and maybe a batch or vbs script to do the work

[AndrewB]

Have you considered Windows Rights Management Service? It has a server side install and a client side install and can allow you to prevent users from saving emails altogether.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

I would log a call with Microsoft to ask them if that is possible.

From a quick google search it doesn't appear to be do-able.

[psharp]

What version of Outlook are you dealing with?  You can disable the menu items, but this won't stop them from dragging and dropping items to their desktop.

I found these instructions on the MSFT forums.  I'll see if I can come up w/ a solution for the drag-and-drop method.

Disable commands with control IDs

1. In Group Policy Object Editor console with the 2007 Office system Administrative Template files (.adm files) loaded, expand User Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and expand the application for which you want to disable commands (for example, double-click Microsoft Office Outlook 2007).

2. Click Disable items in User Interface, click Custom, double-click Disable commands, and click Enabled.

3. Click Show, click Add in the Show Contents dialog box, enter the control ID (e.g., 748 for Save As) for the command you want to disable in the Add Item dialog box, and click OK.
   

[Rob_Wilcox1]

psharp, did you find anything?

[psharp]

I haven't found a way to disable drag-and-drop from Outlook specifically.  There may be a way to disable drag-and-drop system-wide, but that may over-step the needs of Mnereng, and ultimately cause more problems than it solves.