Hide the Status Bubble on User Profiles in SharePoint 2010

If you have attempted to disable the Status Message field on User Profiles through profile property settings and policies, you may have noticed the Status bubble still appears next to a user’s image on their own profile:

This can be confusing, as users may think they still have the option to update a Status field, even though the display of the information has been disabled.

Use CSS in the Master Page

One option that works well is to use CSS in the MySite Master Page to hide the Status bubble.

• Open the MySite site in SharePoint Designer 2010. Typically, this is found at: http://webaddress/my
• In the Site Objects browser, click Master Pages

• In the list of Master Pages, copy and paste the mysite.master file to create a new Master Page
• Rename the new Master Page to something appropriate and descriptive
• Click on the new file to Check Out and Edit File in Advanced Mode
• Before the closing </head> tag, add the following CSS. This makes use of a multiple class selector to get at the <div> we want to hide:   1: <style type="text/css">  2: .ms-contactcardtext2.ms-identitypiecenotediv {  3: display:none;  4: }  5: </style>
• Save and close the file, then Check In
• Right-click the Master Page, and click Set as Custom Master Page

Now refresh the Profile page. The Status bubble should be hidden on each tab of the Profile.

Ideally, you could create the customization as a feature, for easy deployment and disabling the Status bubble with a mouse click.