How to Turn Off the Outlook 2010 Social Connector

Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Outlook 2010 features a new Outlook Social Connector that integrates Outlook with several social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and My Space.  The idea is to provide a pane at the bottom of each message that shows the recent social networking updates from the senders and recipients in each message.  Outlook 2010 will also pull photos or avatars of the senders and recipients from these social networks to provide a fuller, richer and more personal messaging experience.


For more information about the Outlook Social Connector, see Announcing the Outlook Social Connector on the Outlook product team's blog.

While this might be a good idea for home users or businesses that are more open to social networking, I find that most corporate networks block access to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and My Space.  This renders the Outlook Social Connector useless and takes up valuable screen real estate, as shown below.


If you happen to click the "People Pane" (highlighted in red above) it expands to show more information from the configured social networking sites, taking up even more room.  Here's how to get rid of it.

On the Outlook 2010 main screen click the View tab, then People Pane, then select Off.  Viola!

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10 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 6, 2010 at 2:36 PM

    Thank you so much for this. My outlook has been crashing because of this. Its so annoying.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownApril 26, 2011 at 5:37 AM

    Thanks so much! It was so annoying to accidentally click in that area and get prompts to add a vendor's social networking site.

    ReplyDelete
  3. andreiSeptember 2, 2011 at 1:30 PM

    Thanks, my outlook was downloading a html file containing SocialConnector stuff, each time I was clicking and opening an email - the most annoying stuff ever.

    Your solution helped.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AllanMay 10, 2012 at 7:04 PM

    Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not sure how it got clicked on in the first place.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 1, 2012 at 6:27 AM

    Thank you very much for this information. You would think MS would have a quick link in help to display this information.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJune 26, 2012 at 10:59 AM

    Thank you. This was activated in the last windows update. It is intrusive and crass gall of them to do things like this.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2012 at 12:58 PM

    Is there a way to remove this from all users through GPO or something?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jeff Guillet - @exptaSeptember 10, 2012 at 1:55 PM

    See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2020103 to disable the Outlook social connector using group policy.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousSeptember 12, 2012 at 9:10 AM

    thank you very much, worked great

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousNovember 28, 2012 at 2:19 PM

    Great info; thanks! Microsoft always trying to fix things that aren't broken...

    ReplyDelete

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