The "Make Outlook the default program for E-mail, Contacts, and Calendar" setting is disabled in Outlook 2007

An administrator uses the Office Customization Tool (OCT) to set the default user settings for an installation of a 2007 Microsoft Office suite. Then, the administrator enables the Make Outlook the default program for E-mail, Contacts, and Calendar setting. When a user tries to change the Make Outlook the default program for E-mail, Contacts, and Calendar setting in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, the setting is disabled. This problem occurs even though the user has administrator permissions.

Note To view the Make Outlook the default program for E-mail, Contacts, and Calendar setting, click Options on the Tools menu, and then click the Other tab.

This problem occurs because the registry path in the Outlk12.opa file is incorrect. The registry path should not point to the \Software\Policies section of the registry.

Note This problem occurs only on Microsoft Windows XP and on Windows Server 2003. On Windows Vista, the 2007 Office Setup program is prevented from creating the registry entry in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options section of the registry. This is true unless the User Account Control (UAC) is disabled.

This issue is corrected in an updated set of ADM and OPA files that are provided in the "2007 Office system Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML) and Office Customization Tool version 2.0" package.

To resolve this issue in the Office Customization Tool, follow these steps:

1. To download the "2007 Office system Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML) and Office Customization Tool version 2.0" package, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
   http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92d8519a-e143-4aee-8f7a-e4bbaeba13e7 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92d8519a-e143-4aee-8f7a-e4bbaeba13e7)
2. After you download the package, double-click the AdminTemplates.exe file to start the extraction, and then save the extracted files to a folder.
3. Replace the Office installation CD\Admin folder with the Admin folder in the folder where you extracted the files.

The OCT is available only in the volume license versions of the 2007 Office products. For more information about the OCT, visit the following Microsoft Web site:For more information about how to use the updated ADM files, visit the following Web site:

The OCT enables an administrator to set the default user settings for 2007 Office installations. After the installation is complete, a user should be able to modify this setting. This is true unless the administrator has used the Office policy file (.adm file) to lock the settings.