Configuring outlook offline with PST files on the network

[Guest]

In my company, were are using MS outlook 2003 that are installed on many
laptops for telecommuting users. For security reason, most of those users'
data have to be stored on the network. That include all the personal folders
(.PST) file associated with MS outlook. However, when trying to configure MS
outlook 2003 client to work in offline mode, when the network connection get
lost, the user find himself unable to get back to his regular profile in
outlook. He will keep getting the message that " the connection to the
exchange server has been lost. He then get prompted for 3 choices: Retry,
offline or cancel. " If he tries to use the offline option, there is an error
message and a window dialog box that comes up which says that outlook cannot
find the personal folder located on the network. Most of the time, the user
will never be allowed to login to outlook, he will keep getting those dialog
boxes over and over again. Is there a workaround to this problem? I have
consulted some tech documentation. It seemed that personal folder files are
among the type of files that are not supposed to be configured for use in
offline mode.... In outlook 2003, I have not seen any settings that would
permit to configure personal folders as offline files such as the inbox,
calendar or tasks folders etc.... Anybody who may have an idea or suggestion
to solve that issue , please help....

 

[Noel All]

If it because of the danger of the laptops getting stolen then configure
Outlook 2003 to use cached mode and implement security on the laptop so that
the sensitive data would not be available to any but users with the
necessary credentials.
If it because of backup purposes then cached mode stores the information in
an ost file (the ost file is local to the laptop) which is synchronised with
the Exchange mailbox upon connection so as long as your backing up Exchange
then you will have backed up all the users Outlook information up to the
last synchronisation.

As you have found out a pst file is not a format that is used for offline
use, its an ost file that is used. Also Microsoft doesn't recommend using a
pst file on a network share because of data corruption.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your feedback. I will research the outlook 2003 cached mode
feature and see how it can respond to the company needs. I have a question
though? if microsoft does not recommend the use of PST file on the network
because of the risk of data corruption, what type of alternate solution have
they implemented for users who would like to have a mean of storing
personal/company email related data that would not be able to reside on the
exchange server because of hard drive space limitation? Is there a way to
safely utilize the users' network home folder to store some of that
information?

 

[Noel All]

I cannot speak for Microsoft and I am not sure they would offer a solution
other than to slap in a few more GB's of hard disk space especially in light
of costs of hard drives against the risk of data corruption. If however you
are getting near your Exchange store limit then it maybe time to reassess
your Exchange network (easy for me to say, I am not shelling out the dosh).