Using Outlook at work and home

[Jonathan Finney]

I use OL2002 on my Win2K work PC (IMO not Exchange).

I have recently built a new PC at home and am running WinXP Pro with OL2003
as part of my Office 2003 install. Everything works Ok on both machines,
but I don't use Outlook at home because I have no way to synchronise the PST
files.

I am aware of the many products that allow this facility, but as I'm only
ever working at work OR at home, I'd like to know if it would be possible to
simply synchronise my work and home PST files and continue working at home.

I already synchronise my entire data folder with a copy on my home machine
using a program called Remotely Anywhere and this seems to be working fine
for keeping my data files up to date and adds the extra security of having a
duplicate copy of my valuable data stored remotely. It does impose a
certain amount of discipline in that I have to sync (or replicate) my data
files before and after working at home, but so far this seems to be OK.

I assume I will have to upgrade my work Office 2002 installation to 2003 (or
at least Outlook) in case there are any differences in the PST file
structure or handling. Is this so?

Also, my work machine has my PST files in the default location on my local
C: drive. All my other valuable data (including daily PST backups) are
stored on another a separate drive on another machine on the LAN (Win2k PTP)
to allow convenient backing up. I'd like to have my PST files stored here,
too for obvious reasons, but this gave problems with an earlier version of
Outlook and I was told that the PST files should be stored locally. Is this
still the case or can I store my PSTs on my LAN data drive?

 

[Alex Yu]

Jonathan Finney said the following on 11/17/2004 7:14 AM:

I assume I will have to upgrade my work Office 2002 installation to 2003 (or
at least Outlook) in case there are any differences in the PST file
structure or handling. Is this so?

Well, yes and no. If you have created a new PST file (Unicode) using
Outlook 2003, then older version of Outlook will not be able to read it.

You can always put PST on a network drive. You just want to make sure
that speed is nice and the server or workstation that shares the drive
is always on.

--
Alex Yu
http://mucha.us/blogs/alex/

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[Jonathan Finney]

Thanks Alex.

So, you don't think I'll have problems with PST on a network drive? I'm
sure I had problems with this in an earlier version of Outlook. It may have
been OL98 on a Win98 PTP network, though. My new LAN is only 3 PCs on a
Win2K PTP with SMC switch and SMC 10/100 cards using Cat5 cabling. I don't
have any network problems except that sometimes when browsing through folder
structures, a folder will get 'stuck' for a few moments (<10 sec) before
opening.

I can always give it a try after I've upgraded to Office 2003 at work. This
is essential if I want to sync work and home PSTs.

 

[Jeff Stephenson [MSFT]]

The PST was not designed to be used on a network drive, and that
configuration is not supported. Network glitches can lead to PST
corruption.

 

[Jonathan Finney]

Thanks Jeff.

Thought so.

Can you suggest another way to sync home and work PSTs?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Can you suggest another way to sync home and work PSTs?

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/sync.htm