Dear Pete,
Thank you for posting here.
Based on my knowledge, it is an expected behavior. Let me show you the
Offline Address Book mechanism in Outlook 2003 Cached Exchange Mode.
Cached Exchange Mode is the new feature in Outlook 2003. When you are
running in cached mode, your Exchange mailbox is synchronized to a local
file (an .ost file), and the offline address list from your Exchange
computer is synchronized to a collection of files (.oab files) on your
client computer. Outlook directly accesses the .ost file and the .oab files
on your hard disk instead of communicating directly with your server or
servers.
In Outlook 2003 cached mode, the Outlook will download full version of OAB
during first login. And it will automatically updates the Offline Address
Book on the client every 24 hours. When domain administrator makes any
changes in the attribute of user object, the key point is that Offline
Address Book in Exchange Server will also update every 24 hours unless you
manually Rebuild Offline Address Book in ESM. This means basically that
your customer may get the latest Offline Address Book within 24-48 hours.
For more information about Outlook Offline Address Book, please refer to
the following article.
Administering the Offline Address Book in Outlook 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;841273
So if you still prefer using Cached Exchange Mode and would like your user
to get latest Global Address Book, you can try one of the following
suggestions.
Suggestion 1
==========
We can modify the registry to forced Outlook to use GAL instead of using
Offline Address Book, which will make your Outlook 2003 able to update the
address book immediately.
Note: In this configuration, you will be unable to use Address Book if you
are working offline. However, it is a recommended configuration if the
Outlook and the Exchange server are located in the same subnet.
1. On the client machine, click Start, click Run, type regedit in the open
box and press Enter.
2. Create a new key if it does not exist:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Cached Mode
Parameter: DownloadOAB
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0x00000000
- This value forces all directory requests to access the online Active
Directory Global Address List.
3. Quit Registry
4. Perform a search for the .OAB files and delete them.
5. Restart Outlook.
Suggestion 2
==========
We can rebuild Offline Address Book and force the Outlook to perform a
complete download of whole Address book. To do so, please follow the steps
below.
1. Every time domain administrator makes any changes in User Object
attribute, after that, please follow steps below to manually rebuild OAB.
This will force update in Active Directory and decrease 24 hours to update
OAB in Exchange Server Side.
Rebuild Offline Address Book
---------------------------
1). Open Exchange System Manager
2). Navigate to <Organization name>\Recipients\Offline Address book lists\
3). Right click on the default offline address list and select Rebuild.
2. Then you tell your customer every time they would like to get the latest
user information, follow steps below to manually download Address book.
This will force the downloading of update in Server Side, and decrease 24
hours to update OAB in Outlook Client Side.
Download Address book
------------------------
1). Open Outlook 2003.
2). Click Tools menu, point to Send/Receive and click Download Address
Book¡
3). Clear Download Changes since last Send/Receive checkbox.
4). Select Full Details.
5). Choose \Global Address List and click OK.
This will guarantee all your customers get the latest OAB as they want when
they are online. And even when they are offline, they can access the cached
OAB in local disk.
Hope this helps. I look forward to your reply. If there is anything
unclear, feel free to let me know. Thanks and have a nice day!
Thanks & Regards,
Lee Li
Microsoft Online Partner Support
Get Secure! -
www.microsoft.com/security
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