Category Show-n-Tell Thursday
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Last week I told you about my biggest pet peeve with emails - Return Receipts. I gave you some nice code that can be used to identify and remove return receipts at your leisure. This week I'll cover another email pet peeve of mine - emails that have been tagged to prevent copy/print/forward/etc. This is almost always done by someone who thinks you'll forward the email around - and it usually contains something incriminating. It is a pet peeve of mine that someone doesn't trust me enough to be discreet. If you want to send me something and you think I won't know to keep something private, then either tell me explicitly in the email "HEY, don't share this with anyone", or better yet DON'T SEND THE EMAIL. Everyone should operate under the assumption that EVERYTHING you put down in an email is subject to being shared with the world at some point. If you are considering sending something that sensitive via email then I suggest you don't, and talk to the person on the phone or in person instead. Now let's explore this feature and how it works - and how you can disable it.

$KeepPrivate
The field under the hood that prevents copying/printing/forwarding of an email is called $KeepPrivate. This item can get set in a document in a few ways:

• Enable the "Prevent Copying" option in Delivery Options of an email, as shown below:
  
  
• Set the "Disable printing/forwarding/copying to the clipboard" property in the Form properties box:
  
  
• Here's one that bites people in the butt sometimes - if you have someone listed in the ACL, and they do NOT have "Replicate or copy documents" selected for their ACL entry, then this field will be set for docs they create:
  
  
• Of course you can maually set the $KeepPrivate item to "1" programmatically, like through an agent

The "Replicate or copy documents" option has caused many people problems in the past, for a variety of issues (search the KBase for more information). For this particular topic, if this option is NOT checked for a user, then the $KeepPrivate field item set to a value of "1" will be added to all documents created by that user. If you don't know this, then troubleshooting this problem is a big PITA. Hopefully this will help you avoid this pain.

I discovered one interesting bit of information while testing for this blog entry - there is another value besides "1" and "0" for $KeepPrivate. Under certain circumstances $KeepPrivate will be set to a value of "2". I talked with my colleague Andre Guirard and he discovered that the value "2" is the same as "1" except that "2" allows the document to be resent. I found this "2" value when I created a new memo and then saved it as a draft - the value is set to "2". This makes sense, because this allows me to edit the document again and send it without needing to reset the "Prevent Copying" feature. The $KeepPrivate value will get set to "1" as it is sent.

Disabling $KeepPrivate
So now you've have an email that someone has sent you, and they have $KeepPrivate marked on the email. You don't particularly like this person, and you want to make sure their boss knows what they sent. Simply run the following one-line agent against the email and you will be able to copy, forward, or print this email to your heart's content:

FIELD $KeepPrivate := @DeleteField

You could also set up something similar to what I set up for ReturnReceipt = an icon in your Inbox and an action with the above code to remove the tag. I use the "secret agent man" icon (number 163) for KeepPrivate notification, but you can choose your own.

Additionally Chris Toohey has blogged about this in the past (way back in 2003) as well - he gives you some nifty code to place in a smarticon, if you wish. You can read his suggestion here.

Conclusion
Hope you enjoyed this little tour of $KeepPrivate - what it is, how it works, and how you can remove it. Remember, $KeepPrivate is NOT a security feature (as stressed in this technote), and if you really don't want someone mishandling your information, then don't send it in an email.



Rock
**Why does a round pizza come in a square box?