group policy
Disabling Windows File Explorer banner advertising
Microsoft has soo much advertising power with Windows 10, they can now put banners up in Windows Explorer via updates. You may see one such as this:
'Save your documents and photos to OneDrive' or 'Get the best deal on your cloud storage with OneDrive'
The setting is called Show Sync Provider Notifications however it has been used for other purposes such as when you do a feature update
To prevent this from happening push out a group policy User preference
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Value: ShowSyncProviderNotifications
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value Data: 00000000
Base: Hex
Disabling (Adobe's) Office Add-ins
I don't think outlook should be making PDFs.. You can disable the add-ins with group policy
Download Office ADMX files
2013: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=35554
2016: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=49030
Copy the files under ADMX to your policy central store
Now create a group policy, browse to
User Configuration > Administrative Template > Microsoft Outlook 2016 > Miscellaneous > List Of Manage add-ins
Edit the policy setting, click show
Then specify the add-ins you want to disable with a value 0
To block other add-ins you need to find the progID for the addin, they can be found in the registry for each app in the suite:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins
To block Adobe out of Office altogether:
Admin Templates - For each List of manage Add-ins
Microsoft Excel 2016:
PDFMaker.OfficeAddin 0
Microsoft Excel 2013:
PDFMaker.OfficeAddin 0
Microsoft Word 2016:
PDFMaker.OfficeAddin 0
Microsoft Word 2013:
PDFMaker.OfficeAddin 0
Microsoft Powerpoint 2016:
PDFMaker.OfficeAddin 0
Microsoft Powerpoint 2013:
PDFMaker.OfficeAddin 0
Microsoft Outlook 2016:
AdobeAcroOutlook.SendAsLink 0
PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook 0
Microsoft Outlook 2013:
AdobeAcroOutlook.SendAsLink 0
PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook 0
Another option (less harsh) is to change the load behaviour to 2 via registry after install or possibly a preference. This makes the plugin not loaded by default but allows the user to load it manually.
Example Reg https://1drv.ms/t/s!Apq2Xflj18I1wGkFeyX_T3lbtM5G