2nd request How to tell cache to put ost on differnt drive

[Guest]

Have a user who has Outlook 2003 in cache mode. How do I tell cache mode to
write his ost file to a different location? If I just move his ost it
rewites another in orginal location. Thanks

 

[Rex Poland]

1. Close Outlook.

2. Go to Control Panel | Mail.

3. Email Accounts.

4. View or change existing e-mail accounts.

5. Select E-mail Account and click Change.

6. Click "More Settings..." and then select the "Advanced" tab.

7. Uncheck "Use Cached Exchange Mode" and "Apply".

8. Click "Offline Folder File Settings..." and then click "Disable Offline
Use".

9. Answer "Yes" to question.

10. Click "Offline Folder File Settings..." and modify the path to an
existing drive and folder that will store the .ost file and click "OK".

11. Check "Use Cached Exchange Mode" and "Apply".

12. Click "OK" and or "Finish" until complete.

All done. Your .ost file has been moved.

Good Luck,

Rex Poland

 

[Guest]

Wonderful help Rex, great job! Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed
answer. My question is a bit greedy. I have a user who has 9.x GB on one
disk and another 9.x disk WIDE OPEN! Is there a way to set up the drive to
SPAN to the next disk, giving more hard drive space? Maybe the wrong
question for this forum, but is there a way to move all users logged onto
this shared computer? There are multiple users with multiple OST files and
people log on thorught the day / week and setting it up as such is fantastic,
but tough to manage.

Thank you again Rex, wonderful job!

Matt

 

[Guest]

Rex,

this was a great help for me also. You have no idea how far and wide I had
searched to find an answer like this. I have another question but first some
background.

Briefly we are running Outlook 2003 on MS Exchange server. We have a number
of regional offices dragging mail across fairly slow (256 on avg) network
connections. We run in cached mode and have an issue any time a user logs
onto a new PC as their profile is stored locally on their old machine. So
they log on, set up the mail client on the new machine, and then wait for the
ost file to replicate. If it is someone that has been around a while this
could be around 90mb or so.

Ideally you would set up their ost file to point to a network drive i.e. set
their profile up to point to a network drive. I have sent info through on how
to do this across the org. to our central IT area but it is 'on the list' ;o)
(my role is remote IT support). Therefore I have to find a way to copy their
OST file from their old machine to their new then tell Outlook to behave and
actually use it - as when I tried initially, Outlook did it's trick of
creating an outlook1.ost file and then proceeding with the undesired network
synch.

I then found your instruction below. It worked a treat except for one thing.
When I log on to Outlook now I get an error that says:

Outlook is using an old copy of your Offline Folder file (.ost). Exit
Outlook, delete the .ost file, and restart Outlook. A new file will be
automatically created the next time you initiate a send/receive.

Well guess what I don't want to do! ;o) .

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

How about this possibility for Outlook 2003 with SP2

1) Use the ForcePSTPath and ForceOSTPath values. (PST to network or local
location. OST should remain local because Microsoft doesn't support the use
of PST/OST files from a network drive and you really want to ensure that if
the network connection goes south, that Outlook works.)

2) If you look in the Outlook 2003 administrative template file there is a
setting called "Cached Exchange Mode (File | Cached Exchange Mode)". Now if
you set this policy to Download Headers, it will set a registry value in the
HKCU Policies section and enforce it. Not so hot when you want to give the
user a choice to switch back to Full Items. What I'm thinking is that you
can create/modify the administrative template so it creates the registry key
as a preference (goes under HKCU/Software/Microsoft rather than Policies
section).

Now switching it this way means that a new windows xp user profile will have
a registry key that forces Outlook 2003 into Header Only mode to start, but
gives the user the option to switch to full item later. In theory this
should allow them to get to work faster and you do not incur extra bandwidth
utilization when going after that OST file on a network share.

/neo

PS - I'm assuming that Exchange 2003 is the backend.

 

[Guest]

Neo,

thanks so much for the detailed response. Unfortunately I am kind of after a
quick fix to be able to simply copy the OST file to a new machine when a user
moves. Have them log onto Outlook, then specify for Outlook to use the OST
file I have copied from the other machine. The suggestion you have put
forward sounds good but would not be something I could do easily for random
users and isn't something I would be able to do, that would come down to the
central IT area again adjusting standard operating environments etc.

Do you have have any other ideas? ;o) ... it's interesting that this error
message doesn't seem to be a very widely experienced issue. I guess everyone
else is operating on big fat network links everywhere so such an operation is
not an issue, that or they have megabucks to spend on having local mail
servers everywhere.

cheers,
Daniel

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Have you tried the steps at the bottom of
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=872930

 

[Guest]

Yeah, that's pretty much I think what Rex's instructions covered too. Grrrr.
I've just tried various tweakings and creating a new profile and copying the
ost to another drive (eg. local data server network drive). No matter what I
do, I can't get rid of this bleeding message! Of course Outlook continues to
function quite happily.

I'll keep working with it and see if I can find a way around it.

Daniel

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

I'll try the steps between a laptop and desktop because there is supposed to
way to use a 'seed' ost to help cut down on the first time synchronization
of large mailboxes.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Neo... it's not some silly rights issue or something I wonder?... and
would the version of Exchange server affect anything... (I have mostly dealt
with client side issues to this point) and as we have a mix of 2000 and 2003
servers at the moment I'm unsure what version I am dealing with. I'm finding
this out at the moment.

cheers and thanks for the help.
Daniel

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

I was able to duplicate the error message you posted of "Outlook is using an
old copy of your Offline Folder file (.ost). Exit Outlook, delete the .ost
file, and restart Outlook. A new file will be automatically created the
next time you initiate a send/receive" and it isn't permissions.

You are performing the necessary steps to establish a seed OST. The only
problem is that you can't have 2 or more machines come up on that same seed
OST. (For example, no taking a snaphot of the files from the old, let the
user keep truckin, go setup the new, and then have them come over.)

 

[Guest]

Thanks Neo, so to get around this just to reflect what I think you are saying.

- User logs out of Outlook on current machine
- Copy the seed OST file to a new machine
- Start up Outlook, configure for user, pointing to seed OST
- Outlook should work find without sanity testing error message coming up
each time on logon on new machine.

I'll have a go and see what happens anyway as I'm fairly sure this is what
you are saying.

 

[Guest]

Success!

I'll explain what I did as it wasn't exactly moving to a new machine or
anything but it was pointing the mail file to a network drive (LAN server).

- Exitted Outlook on current machine
- Copied OST file from default loc on C:\ to folder on network drive
- Followed instructions as per 'Client Workstation' in:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=872930 NOTE: Only difference was that
because I had already used Outlook on this PC I thought it safer to remove
the current Outlook profile and add new with settings specified and pointing
to network drive ost file
- Started Outlook... NO ERROR!!!

The added benefit with this being that using the local LAN server as the
location will remove the need to copy the OST file all over the shop all the
time. It's just a matter of setting up the machines to be used to point to
that file. I know Microsoft 'don't support it' but that's only because it's
using a 'double network' type of scenario but availability on a local LAN
server is still pretty high for this not to be a major concern.

I will do more testing and playing with this and will post again if any more
info comes to light.

Thanks for helping out Neo.