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.

Solution:

To disable the native email signature experience 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 above script accordingly.

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

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

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

Fig. 2. Final, 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 Endpoint Manager admin center.
2. Go to Devices > Configuration profiles and click Create profile (Fig. 3.).

Fig. 3. Accessing the configuration profile creation settings in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager 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 a new configuration profile (Fig. 4.).

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

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

Fig. 5. Configuring basic 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. In the next step, you can configure Scope tags if you use this feature. Click Next to move on.
7. The Assignments step allows you to define scope of users for whom the native signature experience 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 Azure Active Directory user groups.

   Info

   If you wish to allow users belonging to certain AAD groups to use the native signature experience in Outlook for Mac instead, you can exclude them from this policy by clicking Add groups under Excluded groups (see bottom portion of Fig. 7.).

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, the native signature experience in Outlook for Mac will be disabled on the machines of all/selected users.

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

See also:

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