Microsoft offers temporary workaround for 'Microsoft Outlook was not able to create a message with restricted permission' error

Over the last few months, there have been numerous complaints from users of Microsoft Outlook that they are unable to reply to encrypted emails. An error message that reads "Microsoft Outlook was not able to create a message with restricted permission" is displayed.

While Microsoft has acknowledged the issue in the desktop email client, the company is yet to fix it properly. There is, however, a temporary workaround that can be used to make it possible to reply to encrypted emails.

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The acknowledgement of the problem comes in a support document entitled “Error replying to encrypted emails from Outlook Desktop.”

Here Microsoft says:

When you reply to an OMEv2 encrypted email from Outlook Desktop, you may get the following error message:

"Microsoft Outlook was not able to create a message with restricted permission."

This issue has been reported starting with Current Channel Version 2402 (Build 17328.20142) and higher.

The fact that Microsoft is aware of the issue is a start, but for now there is no permanent fix. Microsoft says: "The Outlook Team is investigating this issue. We will update this topic when we know more about fix status".

The company goes on to offer up a couple of workarounds, the first of which is to @reply to the encrypted emails in either Outlook Web Access (OWA) or new Outlook which do not have this issue.

Microsoft also says:

If you urgently need to use Outlook Desktop to reply to encrypted emails, use the steps below to revert to the prior working build:

1. Open a Command Prompt window, from Windows search box type Command Prompt, right click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

2. Paste the commands below into the Command Prompt window and press Enter after each:

cd %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun

officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17231.20236

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