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Nienkamper

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Outlook 2003 Signatures not disabled through group policy.

I have recently deployed Exclaimer Mail Utils so that we can insert our new signature on all emails. It works like a charm; however, I'm having trouble disabling the users personal signatures.
I setup the group policy to disable user signatures in outlook '03 and '07 (running both in our environment). It tested fine on my machine and a few others. So I enforced it on our whole main office. It didn't seem to take effect though on every user, so I was able to push a GP Update to all machines using a 3rd party util called Specops Remote Admin.
Now after the users are logged off and back on, the signature is actually disabled. But whenever you try and send a new email, it still inserts the sig. It is not until you go into the Option Menu In Outlook, and then actually LOOK at the signature config under the mail setup tab, that you see it is fully disabled (grayed out). Once you have done that, it seems to wipe the sig out and then it is not attached anymore......weird. Has anyone else experienced this or know how to fix it without going around to every machine???
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wdurrett
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Avatar of Shreedhar Ette
Hi,

Does Outlook 2003 is updated with latest service pack?

Also check the hotfix http://support.microsoft.com/kb/898076

I hope this helps,
Shree
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Nienkamper

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Shreedhar: all machines are up to date on patches and SPs (2003: SP3)
wdurrett: added a batch script to the Outlook GP, to delete all contents of the directory you mentioned. i then tried to force the changed through using the Specops Remote Admin util again, and did a GPUpdate to all comps. hopefully they all pickup the GPO changes this time, as some machines didnt when i set the signatures to disabled.
I'll let you know how things go tomorrow
Well, all seems to be fine today for the most part.

Thanks wdurrett, adding that batch script seemed to do the trick. Although, I'm not sure if part of what helped was forcing a gpupdate to all machines (from the server).

Before I close off the question and award the points though, I'm just curious; does anyone have an idea on why some of the machines might have been so slow in getting the GPO updates? I set the GPO on Friday, and yet it was still not taking effect on all users by Monday. Also note that when I ran the GP results in the policy management panel, i was getting the following error for my Outlook GPO: Access Denied (Security Filtering).

From what I read, this may due to the fact that the GPO only affected user settings??
WOuld have been nice to figure out why the machines were not being updated by the policies, as this could be a problem in the future too.....
but no one else seems to want to comment.