Set the default reply option for Office 365 OWA client

The management of the default reply option for Office 365 OWA users, can be implemented on two levels:

1. User level – in this option, the users set the default reply option by himself by using the OWA setting’s options menu.
2. Administrator level – in this scenario, the Exchange administrator can use the PowerShell command that will be utilized for a particular Office 365 user or for all Office 365 users.

Set the default Reply option for Office 365 OWA client using the OWA Web interface

In this section, we will demonstrate how Office 365 users can set the default reply option of the OWA client.

• In the following screenshot, we can see that the default reply option of Office 365 OWA is
  set to – Reply All

• Login to your OWA Office 365 mail account
• Select the setting menu (Gear icon)
• In the section, My app settings, select – mail

• On the left menu bar, choose the menu – Reply settings

We can see that the default setting is – Reply All

• Select – Reply and click Save

In the following screenshot, we can see that now the default reply option of the OWA client was updated to – Reply.

Set the default Reply option for Office 365 OWA client using PowerShell

In this section, we review how to manage the default reply option for OWA Office 365 users using PowerShell.

The main advantages of using PowerShell are

1. We can set the required configuration setting with the need no instructs users how to set the necessary reply option.
2. When using PowerShell, we can have implemented “Bulk operations.” For example, we can set the default OWA reply settings to “reply” instead of “Reply All” for all the existing Office 365 users.

The PowerShell commands that we use Get-MailboxMessageConfiguration.

Using this command, we can view information on the default OWA reply setting and also, update the existing OWA reply setting.

Here are some examples of the PowerShell command that we can use

View information about OWA replies setting of a specific recipient

Set the OWA reply setting of a specific recipient to reply (instead of the default of – Reply All)

View information about OWA replies setting of all Office 365 recipients

Set the OWA reply setting of all Office 365 recipients to reply (instead of the default of – Reply All)

Using the OWA reply setting PowerShell script

To be able to simplify the utilization of the PowerShell commands that we use for setting and viewing OWA replay settings, I have created a simple PowerShell script.

In the following screenshot, we can see the look at the PowerShell menu interface.

• Menu 0 – use for starting the remote PowerShell session with Office 365 and Exchange on-Premises. In this step, you will need to provide your Office 365 Global administrator credentials.
• Menu 1,2 – use for setting the reply setting of Office 365 OWA recipient
• Menu 3,4 – for setting the reply setting of Office 365 OWA recipients of all Office 365 recipients (Bulk mode). Please think twice before you use the option of “bulk mode” because the setting is affecting all of your Office 365 users.
• Menu 5 – Export information to three different file types about the reply setting of Office 365 OWA recipients.

In the following screenshot, we can see an example of the file (TXT, CSV, and HTML) that exported to C:\INFO

In the following screenshot, we can see an example of the HTML report

Add a mail tip to Distribution Group that relates to the Reply All option

In this section, we will review a nice option that we can use to raise the awareness of our users to the “Reply All” option.

In reality, the option of “Reply All” as the name Implying, was created for enabling users to Replay to all the recipients who appear in the E-mail message.

As we know, many times the users “hit” the Reply All button without thinking too much or without understanding the consequence.

Using the option of Exchange mail tip, we can cause our users to think twice before they use the Reply All button.

Many times the user uses to hit the Reply All button without noticing that some of the recipients are a distribution group, which can contain tens or hundreds of recipients!

In the following demonstration, we will show how to add a mail tip to a distribution group named – “Human resources.”

• Log in to the Exchange Online admin
• On the left menu bar select – recipients
• On the top menu bar select – groups
• Select the specific Distribution group that you want to edit (in our example the Human resources group)

• In the Distribution group window, select multiple
• In the text, window adds the text that will be used for the mail tip

In our example, we add the following notification.

Before you click on the “Reply All” icon, think again!
Do you really want to Reply All”?

• Click Save

In the following screenshot, we can see an example to E-mail that was sent to the distribution group – Human resources.

When the destination recipient gets the E-mail, the mail tip appears at the top of the E-mail.

The recipient can decide to ignore the “Tip”, but we have we brought to the attention of the recipient whom he should consider if they want to use the Reply All option.

Prevent to option of Reply All| Article series index