Error opening encrypted emails from classic Outlook: "Configuring your computer for Information Rights Management"

Last Updated: September 24, 2025

ISSUE

Currently, when using classic Outlook for Windows, you can't open an OMEv2 encrypted email if it was sent from a separate organization (what we call another tenant).

If you attempt to open the encrypted email, you may see the following error message:

"Configuring your computer for Information Rights Management..."

This issue is occurring in all Office channels when opening encrypted emails from other tenants.

STATUS: INVESTIGATING

This issue is being investigated by the Outlook and Purview teams. We will update this topic when we know more.

WORKAROUND

There are two options to workaround this issue:

• Exclude external users from Conditional Access requirements.

• Enable cross-tenant access to trust MFA claims from other organizations.

Enabling cross-tenant access is the simplest workaround as it allows encrypted emails you send to other external tenants to be opened successfully. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Inbound access settings - Default settings page of the Microsoft Entra admin center. Then select Trust settings. You can access it via this direct link.

2. Select the option for Trust multifactor authentication from Microsoft Entra tenants.

It is important to understand what this workaround does and does not do:

• Sending: If you apply the workaround, the only immediate benefit is that encrypted emails you send will be successfully opened by other external tenants.

• Receiving: For you to open an encrypted email sent to you from another external tenant, that sending organization will also need to perform the exact same workaround on their system.

For more information about both options, you can reference this topic: Microsoft Entra configuration for content encrypted by Microsoft Purview Information Protection.

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See Also

Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in classic Outlook for Windows