How to disable email signatures in Outlook for Mac using Intune

Problem:

You would like to use Microsoft Intune to prevent your users from manually creating email signatures in Outlook for Mac on their devices.

Solution:

To disable native email signatures in Outlook for Mac, you first need to prepare a PLIST file with appropriate settings, and next use it in Microsoft Intune when creating a configuration profile. Proceed as follows:

Create a PLIST file

1. Launch the terminal in macOS.
2. Paste and execute the following two commands:

   defaults write ~/Desktop/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist DisableSignatures -bool TRUE
   plutil -convert xml1 ~/Desktop/com.microsoft.Outlook.plist
   

   Info

   By default, the file will be created on macOS's desktop. If you want to create it in a different location, modify the script above accordingly.

3. This way you will get a file named com.microsoft.Outlook.plist with the same contents as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. The resulting PLIST file created with the two commands in terminal.

4. Now, edit the file to remove all the code, except for the DisableSignatures key and its value. The edited file contents should look as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The edited PLIST file to be used in Microsoft Intune later on.

Configure Intune to disable email signatures in Outlook for Mac

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Intune admin center.
2. Go to Devices > Configuration and click Create > New policy (Fig. 3.).

Fig. 3. Creating a new policy in the Microsoft Intune admin center.

3. From the Platform and Profile type drop-down menus, choose macOS and Templates, respectively. Next, select Preference file under Template name, and click Create to add the new configuration policy profile (Fig. 4.).

Fig. 4. Choosing the right template for Outlook for Mac.

4. Now, configure the policy profile settings. In the Basics step, provide the profile’s name (mandatory) and description (Fig. 5.). Click Next to proceed.

Fig. 5. Configuring basic policy profile settings.

5. Type com.microsoft.Outlook in the Preference domain name field and under Property list file, load the PLIST file you’ve prepared in the previous section of this article (Fig. 6.).

Fig. 6. Entering the preference domain name and loading the PLIST file.

6. The Assignments step allows you to define the scope of users for whom native email signatures will be disabled. Simply click Add all users to disable signatures for all users in your organization (Fig. 7.). Alternatively, you can click Add groups to turn off signatures for selected Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) user groups.

Fig. 7. Assigning the policy to all users in the organization.

8. In the last step, Review + create, you can verify if all the settings are correct. If you’re fine with them, click Create (Fig. 8.) to save and apply your policy. From now on, native email signatures in Outlook for Mac will be disabled on the devices of all or selected users.

Fig. 8. Reviewing the policy profile settings and applying the policy.

See also:

• Learn how to disable native signatures for other platforms (Windows, Android, iOS)