Forum Discussion
Encrypt button disappearing from Outlook
Alex Melching First you have to have correct license. If the encrypt options button is not listed, go to Outlook trust center, email protection settings and put enable Encrypt emails. After that, there should be encrypt options visible in outlook.
I'm going through this ordeal now. I've talk to MS reps dozens of times. I've gotten so many different answers I'm about sick. We wanted keyword encryption via exchange rule, on demand- keyword and encrypt button, and policy based.
First We were told Azure information protection is what we need. Then I was told Information protection and governance was the license I needed. Then I was told I need both. All along this ride I tested and tested. NOW, the encrypt button won't show in Outlook desktop, shows in OWA, and they tell me that I need E5. It's utter garbage... The outlook desktop encrypt button randomly shows up now. When it does it works. They tell me it must be a bug. They say with my Business standard license the office applications I have is under MS 365 Business apps version, while the encrypt button comes with the MS 365 Enterprise apps(proplus).
Two weeks it too me to get this information and now I have an encrypt button that works, when it shows up, but you have no way of knowing when it's going to pop up. The keyword encryption and policy based via DLP policy works fine.
I call BS.
I'll do a write up on this thread to explain the Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) options and how the license and the version of Office impacts the user experience.
rdiddy I've never had any issues (after much frustration) when support finally figured out that I needed to install a MS program add-on of sorts in order to fix this encrypt button issue. We use Office365 and our versions of Outlook come right from our subscription so you'd think it would already have everything built into Outlook especially since we're always running the latest versions of outlook to make the encrypt button work and work at all times, but it does not..at least not for us. I also found out that it makes it a tad harder if you have more than 1 Inbox in set up in Outlook as you need a license for each email account you intend to send encrypted emails. Employees will forget or simply not understand that they need to make sure they are using only 1 FROM address when encrypting so we had to resort to just paying for a license for any & all email addresses the employee uses so as to avoid this problem.
Before you try installing anything here is the licenses we use that I know works. Apply the same to a user and test...maybe you'll get lucky and it will just work.
Azure Information Protection Premium P2
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
I started with almost exactly what you have. Policy based encryption would not work. The encryption button did show up and was working when I had that license. Though I'm not sure if it would have stayed. MS claims it won't. P2 does not even show as an available service when I search. Also both p1 and p2 show office 365 message encryption as part of that service. I don't know what is what at this point. I know have the below:
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
Azure Information Protection Premium p1
Microsoft 365 E5 Information Protection and Governance
