How to Disable Emoticons in Microsoft Office Communicator

In Communicator's Tools->Options menu, on the "General" tab, there is a checkbox called "Show emoticons in instant messages".

Deselecting this will cause emoticons to not appear in your Communicator. Of course you will still need your colleagues to do the same, if they don't want code "corrupted" in their instances of Communicator.

There is a policy called "DisableEmoticons." I believe you have to download this.

Above "Show Emoticons.." in settings used to reset after next login for me. I found a permanent solution.. open registry (regedit), search for "ShowEmoticons" modify value data of all communicator related values to 0. You're done!