Those who work with e-mail may have the need to prevent the recipients of an email sent to multiple people from having the possibility to forward or reply all, that is, they cannot forward the message to others or reply to all those copied. This functionality exists only on the Microsoft Outlook, 2003, 2007 and 2010 email client.
The protection of sent emails prevents the recipient of a message from copying, printing or forwarding this email.
The reasons for using this setting may be related to the confidentiality of the information present on the message or to the desire to prevent someone from replying to a group email.
To prevent the answer to all there are two modes, one with a manual configuration, the other with a plugin for the program.
The protection will not be absolute, it can only act as a deterrent because, if that protected mail was opened with other e-mail clients other than Microsoft Outlook, the protection would be ineffective.
However, in organizations and offices where mail can only be read with Outlook, this protection is more difficult to bypass.
The manual method for disabling "Reply all and" Forward " is described step by step on a Microsoft Outlook help page .
The creation of the protection module is very simple and can be done once and for all, with the possibility of setting or not the blocking according to the Email.
If you prefer, you can instead use a plugin for Exchange and Outlook (2007 and 2010 only) that deactivates the Reply to all and the forwarding of an Email sent.
The NoReplyAll plugin (free) can be downloaded and installed on the computer used to send e-mail messages.
By reopening Outlook and composing a new message after installing this extension, you should see two new buttons, on the top menu, with which you can disable the forwarding functionality to others.
By trying to send that Email to yourself, protected by Reply to all, you will notice that by reopening the received message the buttons for forwarding the message and replying to the recipients who are copying to the Email are disabled.
The reply to the sender obviously remains possible.
If the user tries to forward or reply to all from the quick menu in Outlook (which is not disabled), a warning will open that the functionality is not available.
If the recipient of the email does not use Microsoft Exchange or Outlook and tries to reply to all, even if it is not disabled, the other recipients will not be automatically copied, which will, if necessary, be selected manually.
As an additional feature, from the configuration menu of this plugin ( Tools -> Options ), it is possible to list some key terms to receive warnings when sending a message without an attachment.
A more effective method to protect the confidentiality of emails sent via Outlook is the BCCThis plugin that allows you to send private CCN messages attached to the email, visible only to some.
