Suppress Autodiscover window in Outlook 2007

When you have configured Exchange 2007 / Outlook 2007 to use the Autodiscover functionality (autodiscover.xml), you have probably seen this window many times:

“Allow this website to configure user@company.com server settings?
https://server-or-domain/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
Your account was redirected to this website for settings.
You should only allow settings from sources you know and trust.”

Autodiscover is a great functionality in Exchange, but this window is one of those things that you don’t want users to bother with. Typically, your users will read the text, try to understand, read again, try a little bit harder to understand, and finally call the service desk. 🙂

Microsoft never implemented a neat Group Policy solution to suppress the Autodiscover notification, but it is possible to suppress this Autodiscover window (and therefore automatically allow the website to configure server settings). To suppress this window, you have to add a registry entry in everyone’s Current User (HKCU). In the following example, I assume that your Exchange server (website) is called “Exchange01”. The registry entry to add will be:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover]
“RedirectServers”=”Exchange01”  (REG_SZ)

If you have multiple locations for your Autodiscover.xml file, you can enter multiple servers, separated by ;

To distribute this registry key to your domain users, you can either choose for a group policy, login script or SMS/SCCM. In my case, I preferred distribution by group policy. I simply edited my existing Outlook 2007 policy by adding the registry key through
User Configuration –> Preferences –> Windows settings –> Registry

For the official Microsoft source, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956528