Forum Discussion

Deleted's avatar
Deleted
Feb 20, 2019

Copy & Paste Restriction (App Protection Policy) not working properly

Hi everyone,

 

i set the following settings for my devices and discovered some problems:

App Protection Policy

  1. Assigned to my Test-Device (iOS)
  2. Targeted Apps = all Default MS Apps (Outlook, Word, Excel, ...)
  3. Properties \ Data protection
    1. Backup Org data to iTunes and iCloud backups = Block
    2. Send Org data to other apps = Policy managed apps with Open-In/Share filtering
    3. Receive data from other apps = All apps
    4. Save copies of Org data = Block
    5. Allow user to save copies to selected services = OneDrive & SharePoint
    6. Restrict cut, copy and paste between other apps = Policy managed apps with paste in

The result is the following:

 

Source

Apple Notes App

Destination

Word (managed)

Destination

Excel (managed)

Destination

Outlook (managed)

Everything works as aspected. I'm able to copy from outside (unmanaged) to inside (managed)

 

Source

Word (managed)

Destination

Word (managed)

Destination

Excel (managed)

Destination

Outlook (managed)

Destination

Apple Notes App

Something works as aspected. I'm able to copy from inside Word (managed) to inside other managed Apps. But: I was able to copy from Word and paste to Apple Notes App. This shouldn't work!

 

Source

Outlook (managed)

Destination

Word (managed)

Destination

Excel (managed)

Destination

Outlook (managed)

Destination

Apple Notes App

Now things getting strange.

I copied some text from outlook (managed) and paste it in different other Apps. 

None of it worked. I just was able to copy from outlook to outlook.

Intune
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Mar 08, 2019
    Hi,

    just to reveal the secret: (it was one for me until now :D )

    I was able to copy content out of my managed Word App even though i deactivated this via App Protection Policy. I wondered why...
    Long story short:

    What have i done wrong?
    I opened my word app and created a new, emtpy document, wrote some sample text and copied it (successfully) in my note-app oder my chrome browser.
    This is an absolutely correct behaviour. This new document isn't in any corporate context.
    When opening a a document marked as "company content" e.g. from a onedrive connected to my corporate account, i was not able to copy content outside. (in my note app or my chrome browser.)

    That's it.
    Hopefully this "unveiling" is helping someone out. :-D


    Patrick
    • PatrickF11's avatar
      PatrickF11
      Steel Contributor
      Apr 18, 2019
      Because of a new techcommunity account, this is just a short response to follow up the thread. :)
  • PatrickF11's avatar
    PatrickF11
    Steel Contributor
    Apr 18, 2019

    Just a short response, because of a new Techcommunity Account. :-) [Ignore me]

  • GraydonB's avatar
    GraydonB
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 03, 2022

    I'm also having this behaviour. I can understand what Patrick is saying, and after testing, it appears that he is correct. 

    However, there is still the odd behaviour of not being able to copy from Outlook to other policy managed apps, like Word.

     

    Any ideas?

     

    Edit: Nevermind! I understand now. So the document has to be saved within the corporate environment (OneDrive, SharePoint in our set-up) in order to be pasted into. So the "Paste in Apps" is a bit misleading, it must be within a corporate app and also in a "document" hosted in the corporate environment. 

    • PatrickF11's avatar
      PatrickF11
      Steel Contributor
      Jun 03, 2022

      GraydonB Hi, the last years I’ve learned a lot and I’ve been aware of this behavior for some time. I totally forgot to update this thread, but thank you very much for doing that for me / the community 🙂