Can a pst file be shared ?

[Randy Pirtle]

I am using Outlook 2000 on a Windows 2000 system.

Our company limits mail account storage to 30 days, after
which it is an individual responsibility to move and
manage the mail or it gets flushed. There are no
exceptions.

I need to share all mail from this account between amoung
8 others so my thoughts were to create a personal folder
and automatically move mail from the account to a location
(pst file)on a file server accessable from the personal
folder. I would create a personal folder on each persons
machine linking to the .pst file.

It appears that Outlook will not even let me create a
personal folder-pst link on another machine when any
machine has the same setup..... regardless of whether the
folder/pst is being accessed at the time. An error, that
the file is in use appears!

Does anyone have any ideas for accomplishing my goal of
sharing all mails with others?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Randy

 

[Lorien]

It can't be done without Exchange Server ... EXCEPT ... There's a
little-known company that offers shareware that allows you to share a .pst
file over the network without needing Exchange. It's called Public Outlook.
Check out http://www.outlookstore.com/

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Wow, what a Draconian mail policy. Are they running something that deletes
items from ALL folders after 30 days, or just specific ones like your Inbox
and Sent Items? Talk to them and see if they can instead implement
reasonable mailbox quotas - I don't really see any reason they should care
how OLD the items are, as long as your mailbox size stays manageable. If it
were me, I'd approach my manager and take this as high up the food chain as
possible!

Anyway, PST files are no good for sharing, and are not ideal in an Exchange
environment to begin with. You can't store them on a network drive (well,
you CAN, but SHOULDN'T; MS does not recommend it, and note that the data
would take up far more space on the server than if it stayed in the mailbox
store to begin with), and if they're stored on a local computer, nobody can
really support them, back them up. etc.

Will the admins let you use public folders for these older items?