User Guide: Remove labels and protection from files and emails that have been labeled by Azure Information Protection

Note

Are you looking for Microsoft Purview Information Protection, formerly Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)?

The Azure Information Protection add-in for Office is now in maintenance mode and will be retired April 2024. Instead, we recommend you use labels that are built in to your Office 365 apps and services. Learn more about the support status of other Azure Information Protection components.

When the Azure Information Protection unified client is installed on your computer, you can remove sensitivity labels and protection from files and emails.

When the sensitivity label that you remove is configured to apply protection, this action also removes protection from the file. You might be prompted to record why you are removing the label.

Important

You must be the owner of the file to remove protection, or been granted permissions to remove protection (the Rights Management permission of Export or Full Control).

If you want to choose a different label or a different set of protection settings, you do not need to remove the label or protection. Instead, choose a new label and if necessary, you can define custom permissions by using File Explorer.

You can remove labels and protection from Office documents and emails when you are creating or editing them from within your Office desktop apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.

You can also remove labels and protection by using File Explorer, which supports additional file types and is a convenient way to remove labels and protection from multiple files at once.

Using Office apps to remove labels and protection from documents and emails

From the Home tab, select the Sensitivity button on the ribbon, and clear the currently selected label.

Or, if you have selected Show Bar from the Sensitivity button, you can select the Delete Label icon from the Azure Information Protection bar:

Azure Information Protection bar - Delete Label

If the Delete Label icon is not immediately available, first select the Edit Label icon:

Azure Information Protection bar - Edit Label

If you still do not see the Delete Label icon, your administrator does not allow you to use this option because all documents and email must have a label.

Using File Explorer to remove labels and protection from files

When you use File Explorer, you can quickly remove labels and protection from a single file, multiple files, or a folder. When you select a folder, all the files in that folder and any subfolders it has are automatically selected.

  1. In File Explorer, select your file, multiple files, or a folder. Right-click, and select Classify and protect.

  2. To remove a label: In the Classify and protect - Azure Information Protection dialog box, click Delete Label. If the label was configured to apply protection, that protection is automatically removed.

  3. To remove custom protection from a single file: In the Classify and protect - Azure Information Protection dialog box, clear the Protect with custom permissions option.

  4. To remove custom protection from multiple files: In the Classify and protect - Azure Information Protection dialog box, click Remove custom permissions.

  5. Click Apply and wait for the Work finished message to see the results. Then click Close.

Other instructions

More how-to instructions from the Azure Information Protection user guide:

Additional information for administrators

See Learn about sensitivity labels.