Disabling Network Popups

Many users find the popup messages about Exchange server messages, network warnings & network connectivity annoying after awhile, especially on busy networks where there are frequent connectivity problems.

Connectivity message

To disable the warnings, users can click or right click on the Outlook icon in the system tray and select the dialog they wish to turn off (or display, if not checked).

Administrators can disable the alerts for all users using a group policy or ADM file. These dialogs can also be configured in the OCT or CIW before deployment.

Disabling these dialogs is as simple as deploying a logon script that changes three registry values to 0 (zero) to turn them off. Using 1 (one) will display the dialogs.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\xx.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons
Show Exchange Messages dialog: Exchange
Show Network Warnings: Netwarn
Show Network Connectivity Changes: NetConn

By deploying these settings in an ADM file, with the default off rather than on, users can change the setting, if they prefer to see the warnings.

Note that we do not recommend disabling these warnings as they can help identify network problems.

Outlook 2010

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons

DWORD: Exchange
DWORD: Netwarn
DWORD: NetConn
Values: 0 (no dialog) or 1 (dialog)

In Outlook 2010, the status bar displays connectivity dialogs. The Balloon keys will not affect this.

Outlook 2007

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons

DWORD: Exchange
DWORD: Netwarn
DWORD: NetConn
Values: 0 (no dialog) or 1 (dialog)

Outlook 2003

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons

DWORD: Exchange
DWORD: Netwarn
DWORD: NetConn
Values: 0 (no dialog) or 1 (dialog)

Do It For Me

If you don't want to edit the registry yourself, you can use the following registry files to disable the alerts.

Balloons-2010 | Balloons-2007 | Balloons-2003

To enable the alerts, open the reg file in NotePad and change dword:00000000 to dword:00000001 for each warning dialog you want to see, then save it and double click to run it.