Is it possible to have two computers share mailboxes on a networked disk?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim

I have a home computer and a laptop; both with licensed copies of Outlook
XP.

What I would like to be able to do is have one location for my e-mail which
I can acess from either my home machine or my laptop; which I take with me
when I go to school. Currently I have my mail residing on my laptop inside
of a share called mailbox that only I can see. I have three pop servers
that I get e-mail along with one Hotmail account and one IMAP account.


I would like to be able to read mail from my home machine when I am at
home; with the laptop being nothing more than a disk server.

When setting this up; I orginally tried to map all of the accounts to a
mailbox file; but I was finding; especially in the case of the IMAP and
HOTMAIl accts; that I was having trouble redirecting it to a folder inside
of a networked share.

I am wondering if there might be an easier way of doing this then just
importing mail files and trying to map them over.
Do I really need to worry about using the same file for both installations
of outlook for the IMAP and HOTMAIL accts?

Thanks much for any and all help

Jim
 
Jim said:
What I would like to be able to do is have one location for my e-mail
which I can acess from either my home machine or my laptop; which I
take with me when I go to school. Currently I have my mail residing
on my laptop inside of a share called mailbox that only I can see. I
have three pop servers that I get e-mail along with one Hotmail
account and one IMAP account.
Click to expand...

For HTTP and IMAP accounts, the server retains the messages and Outlook
creates separate PSTs that act as caches for what the server holds. It all
intents and purposes, the mail is not stored locally and you can treat it
that way, so however else you handle the POP accounts, you can simply add
the HTTP and IMAP accounts to each PC's mail profile and you should see the
same thing on each PC.
I would like to be able to read mail from my home machine when I am at
home; with the laptop being nothing more than a disk server.
Click to expand...

The officially supported methods can be found here:
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/share.htm and
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/sync.htm . However, while it's NOT
supported, you can do the following:

On the PC that you want to be the file server, create a folder and share it
to the network. On my home network, I have a folder "C:\Home Common" that I
share. With Outlook on that PC not running, move to the shared folder the
PST to which the profile containing the POP accounts points; i.e., the PST
mapped as the delivery location for those POP accounts. Then start Outlook.
It will complain that it can't find the PST and will open up a browse
window. Browse to the moved PST, select it, and click OK. Outlook should
then open and you'll have everything you had before. Close this Outlook
again.

On the other PC(s) that you want to access this shared PST, with Outlook
closed and with the home network connected, rename the delivery PST so that
the name is different but keep the ".pst" extension. Start Outlook. This
Outlook should complain about not finding the PST, too. Browse to the
shared PST, select it, and click OK. Outlook should open, showing the
contents of the shared PST exactly as the first PC sees it. Now, if you
wish to incorporate the contents of the renamed PST, open it with
File>Open>Outlook Data File and copy from it to the shared PST all the items
you want each PC to see. When you're done, you can right-click the added
PST and choose Close. Later, if you wish, you can delete the old PST or
burn it to a CD for safekeeping and then delete it.

Keep in mind that THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED, and only one copy of Outlook can be
opened at any one time as long as you're sharing the PST this way.
 
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