How to Add Disclaimer to All Outgoing Emails in Office 365

Introduction

Disclaimers play an important role for every organization to explain its term and legal formalities to the clients. Thus, most of the users nowadays prefer to make every terms clear by simply adding the legal instructions in disclaimers. However, it is not possible for the users to attach/ add disclaimers individually to every mail as it may consume time as well as efforts. Thus, users are in constant search of a method that can be implied to automatically add disclaimer field with every outgoing message. In the following blog, we are going to discuss how to add disclaimer to all outgoing emails in Office 365 account.

Recommended: If you want to apply common disclaimer to all the outgoing emails in your domain, then it’s preferable to use a third party tool.

How Users Find it Important to Set/ Add Disclaimer in Office 365

On observing user's views, we have extracted some of the commonly discussed user's statement regarding Microsoft Office 365 email disclaimer:

"Being an owner of a startup, I need to contact multiple clients to make clear communication. I have recently generated a disclaimer to explain all the legal terms of my organization. I wish that once I write an email, the disclaimer should be automatically added to the emails as it is quite hectic for me to browse and attach the same disclaimer for hundreds of emails. Please suggest a method to create disclaimer in Office 365!"

"I am an editor and writer of a publication house and all my contents are copyrighted. So, I have created a disclaimer to state about copyright issues. But, I cannot spare much time to attach it into every email being sent to different publishers. Is there any solution that would help me to add disclaimer in Office 365?"

"The disclaimer for my organization contains legal information related to confidentiality of our data. While sending emails to our clients, we need to insert disclaimer manually. Many times, we also forget to insert the disclaimer, which creates trouble for us. So, please suggest a method to which the specified disclaimer can be added automatically to the email."

Significance of Creating/ Setting Up Email Disclaimers

Definitely, adding an email disclaimer has much significance for organizations due to which they always make it a point to insert a disclaimer in emails. Basically, disclaimers are the formal statements that are used to make liable formalities or sometimes marketing. One can attach email disclaimer for the following specifications:

• Confidentiality Issues
• Virus related disclaimers
• Contacts implications
• Liability clauses for employees
• Regulatory Compliance

Thus, users are always advised to create/ configure email disclaimer to prevent from certain legal issues. Moreover, an approach should be followed that the disclaimer should get embedded itself; without any additional efforts of users.

How to Add/ Setup Disclaimer to All Outgoing Emails in Office 365?

Manual approach to Setup/ Create Email Disclaimer in Office 365

You can choose to configure/ create a particular email disclaimer automatically by making certain changes in the EAC settings. Follow these steps to set a disclaimer:

• Firstly, login to EAC (Exchange Admin Center).
• Now, click on Mail Flow from the listed options at left bar.
• Click the New(+) button to create new disclaimer.
• Select Apply Disclaimer and observe the new screen.
• Provide a new name to the disclaimer under Name option.
• Under Apply this rule if option, select Apply to all messages.
• You will find Do the Following Option, click on Enter Text option.
• Now, type the text that should be added to the disclaimer and click on OK.
• Next, click on Select one option to customize the action to be taken if Office 365 fails to add disclaimer anyhow:
  
  1. Reject: The message is not delivered and the sender is notified about non-delivery.
  2. Ignore: The message is delivered to the recipient without disclaimer.
  3. Wrap: It creates a new email to add the specified disclaimer in it. The original message is inserted as an attachment.
  
  
• Make sure to check mark the Audit this rule with severity level option.
• Under Choose a mode for this file, click on the required option:
  
  1. Enforce: If you wish to directly save disclaimer without testing it.
  2. Test with Policy Tips: To test the email with reference to policy tips.
  3. Test without Policy Tips: To test the email without considering policy tips.
  
  
• Click on Save to apply the changes made.

So, once you have added the disclaimer, Office 365 will automatically add a disclaimer to every outgoing message.

Limitations of the Manual Approach

The major limitation of the above discussed method is that you need to have admin access to customize the disclaimer settings. Without having access to EAC, it is not possible to add disclaimer in Office 365 automatically. As we know that, it is not possible for every individual employee to have access to Exchange admin. Thus, many end users find it difficult to add the disclaimers using this approach.

Conclusion

Since adding a disclaimer to emails cannot be avoided at any level within the organization, users are always advised to insert email disclaimer for every message. We have covered a detailed strategy to explain how to add disclaimer to all outgoing emails in Office 365. Well, the manual method is applicable only for admin as it involves using EAC to add disclaimer in Office 365. Other end users need not worry about email disclaimer as we have the easiest solution for them too. One should go for Office 365 Admin Manager as it provides functionality for adding a disclaimer for every user; irrespective of their roles or rights.