How to Disable/block "Open in desktop" and "Download/Save" in Sharepoint for a group of users.

Question

Hi team,

Is there any way to disable or block "Open in desktop" and "Download/Save" in Sharepoint for a group of users.

I would like to restrict opening word document on sharepoint for few users.

I tried conditional access, but it works only for block downloading files and not opening files on Office apps.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You could block "Open in app" through conditional policy. Here are steps：

1.Go to Microsoft Entra admin center -> Protection -> Conditional Access -> Create new policy .

2.In the Users section, select users you want to block.

3.In the Target resources section:

4.In the Conditions section:

5.In the Session section:

6.Save and turn on the policy.

Result:

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.