Removing Zoom Icons from Outlook Home Tab - There Must Be a Better Way?

[WoodGrain]

Hi All,

Not sure how many of you use Zoom for conferencing, I'm deploying the Zoom Outlook addin to all users in our organisation so they can schedule in a Zoom Room Calendar appointment from their calendar, however by default Zoom whack in 2 large buttons on the mail Home tab in Outlook, in the 2nd most prominent position (screenshot attached).. This is for calendaring, not sure why they need to put it there apart from arrogance, it's also available on the Calendar Home tab (which is where it should be). The MSI installer has no options for adjusting this.

So, long story short I'm trying to get rid of it for the staff. I've seen you can edit the Outlook XML file, but that's a rabbit hole I'm not sure I want to go down. So I've put this script together, but I'm sure there are better ways of doing this that factor in the user.. and would welcome your feedback.

I'm concerned there may be things that this script can't take into account, such as if the power users have already changed the order of the groups on the Home tab for example, pressing {DOWN 2} may not be selecting "Zoom" (screenshot attached). I can't see any usable information on the tabs screen in AutoIt Window Info that lets be identify or target the Zoom group on the email Home.

Opt("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)
If ProcessExists("outlook.exe") Then
   While Not WinActive(" - Outlook")
      WinActivate(" - Outlook")
      Sleep(500)
   WEnd
   Sleep(250)
   Send("!f")
   Sleep(250)
   Send("!t")
   While Not WinExists("Outlook Options")
      Sleep(200)
   WEnd
   Sleep(250)
   Send("c")
   Sleep(100)
   Send("c")
   Sleep(250)
   Send("{TAB 5}")
   Sleep(250)
   Send("{DOWN 2}")
   Sleep(250)
   Send("!r")
   Send("{ENTER}")
Else
   MsgBox(0, "Outlook not open", "Looks like Outlook is not running, plese close this message, start Outlook, and run this app again.")
EndIf

Thanks!

[WoodGrain]

Hi All,

I've found the XML information and note I could probably write a powershell script to do a search and replace on the XML file, this script will hopefully not be needed at all.

Cheers

[Subz]

You could try:

• Removing Zoom from the Home Tab
• Close Outlook
• Copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Office\olkexplorer.officeUI to shared path.

On your end users machines

• Install Zoom Add-on
• Backup users olkexplorer.officeUI
• Replace with olkexplorer.officeUI from the shared path.

Untested, but have done something similar in the past.