Force Outlook 2010 to ask for credentials via group policy?

Question

Setting: Exchange 2010 backend and the clients are on Outlook 2010

Goal: Force Outlook 2010 to always prompt for logon credentials via group policy, login script, etc.

What I know so far I know that Outlook has this functionality (can be found in More settings, Security tab) via a checkbox that says "Always prompt for logon credentials." The idea is that I want to have that be checked on every machine for every user, every time. I have run Process Monitor and looked at all the registry keys that Outlook accesses when making the checkbox change, but it seems like its a per user basis (not scriptable)

Hopes and dreams That someone has narrowed down a specific reg entry that can be modified to always prompt, or that someone has already written a script that forces that checkbox to autocheck itself.

Answer 1

The value you want is PromptForCredentials, and it is seemingly stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Security, according to this forum post.

However, this Microsoft KB article and another answer in the above forum post suggest it should be in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Security. (Note the addition of the Policies key under Software.) So you may have to test both keys to find out which one it really is.

Regardless, since you want to always prompt for credentials, you would set PromptForCredentials to one (1).

Answer 2

To force Outlook to login once, which is what I needed:

Go to Start -> Control Panel-> Credentials manager -> Generic Credentials-> There will be few entries, select each and select option 'Remove from Vault'.

Restart your PC. Start Outlook and you will be prompted for your credentials.

Answer 3

I believe this can be set for one account on the Exchange server itself via the Security option of "Always prompt for username and password".

If this works, you can then look for a way of setting this for all users on the server (I don't have an Exchange server to play with).

Answer 4

1. Download the Office 2010 Administrative Template files.

2. Unpack them by running the appropriate installer. This will place 3 folders in the selected target location (ADM, ADMX and Admin).

3. Copy the contents of the ADMX folder to %WINDIR%\PolicyDefinitions.

4. Open the Group Policy Editor, you will now find new Administrative Templates at your disposal:

   

5. Amongst other useful policy templates, you'll also find:
   

I'm not sure if either of these correlates to the setting you have in mind, but I believe the templates are always a good start :)