Last Updated: October 1, 2025
ISSUE
When using the Group Policy Editor to configure any setting under the “When sending a message” policy, it sets default values for all the settings grouped under that policy. Consequently, the UI for all the grouped settings gets disabled in the Outlook Options dialog.
For Example: Enabling Automatic Name Checking results in all other settings (including Importance, Sensitivity, Allow commas as address separator, Delete meeting request from Inbox when responding etc.) being disabled in the Outlook Options dialog.
The following example shows the Group Policy editor with a single setting (Automatic name checking) selected:
This next example shows the resulting UI in the Outlook Options dialog from the above group policy configuration. Note all the disabled settings. Not just the Automatic name checking setting.
STATUS: DEPRECATION & PRODUCT CHANGE
Each of the individual settings has been split out into a separate policy which can be configured independently so that setting one no longer disables the UI for all. This is what it looks like in the Group Policy Editor:
Note the new "When sending a message” folder and the “[Deprecated]” label on the older “When sending a message” policy.
And this is the contents of the new folder:
These changes are expected to become effective on October 14th, 2025, in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center.
These changes will also appear in the Office admin templates, Administrative Template files (ADMX/ADML) for Microsoft Office from Official Microsoft Download Center. We will update this topic with the Admin Template version as soon as it is available.
The deprecated policy is expected to be removed by January 2026.
Customers that have these policies implemented already will need to migrate to the new policies.
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See Also
Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in classic Outlook for Windows
