Multiple Vista UA's with One Outlook Calender

[wallaby]

I have 2 User Accounts (UAs) on my new Vista system that I'll call Work and
Play,



Work will access the (e-mail address removed) email account and Play will access the
(e-mail address removed) email account - that's easy



Work and Play will each have there own Contact List.



Is there's a way of having a "shared" list in addition to their "private"
lists?



Work and Play must share the same calendar - there's only one wallaby, and
even it can't be in two places at the same time. But I might like to have
separate To Do lists.



As its is now they have there respective mail accounts, but I dont know how
to get them on the same calender etc. I did some searching in Help but
being new to Outllok I'm not familiar with its vocab so searching yields no
meaning ful results.



ASUS pK5PL, E8200, $GRAM, 250+350 HDD, 16Mbps ADSL2+

Vista Business Edition-SP1, Office 2007 Business Edition, AsutoUpdate On.



TIA

----------

 

[Brian Tillman]

Is there's a way of having a "shared" list in addition to their
"private" lists?

Yes. You can create a PST that each Windows user have defined in its mail
profile and have a contacts folder there.

Work and Play must share the same calendar - there's only one
wallaby, and even it can't be in two places at the same time. But I
might like to have separate To Do lists.

All of Outlook's default folders for any single mail profile are all in the
same file. Contacts, Calendar, Inbox, Outbox, Tasks, etc. are all part of
the same database in the same file. You can't have the same default
calendar without having all the default folders being the same in both
profiles. There are methods of sharing the data (see
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/olshare1.htm and
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/share.asp).

Perhaps if you give a comprehensive description of what you'd like to do,
someone can suggest a good approach.

 

[wallaby]

Tks Brian - I will read the links, taske action and get back to you here.

BTW Windows Mail introduced all those extra line feeds after I did the Send,
not sure I like it as a news reader.

 

[wallaby]

OK I look at the stuff referenced, but I dont think its what I ned.

The documents referenced seem to envisage a scenario whereby two different
people use the same computer, and that at any one time only one person is
is logged in.

My objective is that I will be logged into both of my Vista User Account
(VUA)s at the same time with full access to all facilities (not data) within
each account. I more or less have this under XP using OL for my diary and
OE to access the different mail accounts, this was setup by for me by a
person who's now overseas. I don't want to use Windows Mail (the OE
replacement) and Outlook in the same way on Vista, I want to do it all with
Outlook - a) I like Outlook, b) I just bought a brand new computer, Ofice
2007 etc.

I want to run Outlook 2007 concurrently from two VUAs, each VUA will use
Outlook to service different mail accounts, but I want the same calendar to
be available in both VUA's.

I set up a PST using "File->Data Management->Data Files" called Common
Folders in the file C:\Public\outlookdata\commonfolders.pst. But if Outlook
in VUA is running then that PST cannot be accessed by Outlook in the other
VUA, it's a sharing violation I guess - it reports as "Outlook cannot open
folder"

I cannot believe that this is such an unusual requirement. I run a Not For
Profit organization (NFP) and a small business (SP). I must keep matters
concerning each delineated, if for no other reason than I am obliged to so
by the government in order to get grants.

I think I'll buy an Outlook for Dummies book 2mora. The help text presumes
one has a full grasp of Outlookese, which I don't have.

 

[Brian Tillman]

The documents referenced seem to envisage a scenario whereby two
different people use the same computer, and that at any one time only
one person is is logged in.

My objective is that I will be logged into both of my Vista User
Account (VUA)s at the same time with full access to all facilities
(not data) within each account.

How do you intend to do that? Do you have two keyboards and monitors
attached or do you have a second PC and you'll be using Remote Desktop
Connection, VNC, or some other rmote access tool?

If two users will be logging in at the same time, then you'll need two mail
profiles and you'll need some back-end software if you intend to share any
of the data between those users.

I cannot believe that this is such an unusual requirement. I run a
Not For Profit organization (NFP) and a small business (SP). I must
keep matters concerning each delineated, if for no other reason than
I am obliged to so by the government in order to get grants.

It's not unusual, companies do it all the time, but it takes more than just
two Outlook clients. You need some glue between them and the second URL I
cited mentions some of that glue.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Oh, you mean with Fast User Switching. It worked in Windows XP - two
profiles loaded. I don't think the sleeping profile received new mail until
logged in - and it wasn't all that faster than logging off and on
outlook.... better IMHO is a VPC with the second one running. Use WinXP as
the os though (or 2K if using Ol2003) - vista needs too much disk space.

Your problem is going to be the calendar sharing - both Outlooks can't use
the same calendar pst at the same time. You'll need to use calendar
publishing to accomplish that part.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/



EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)




You can access this newsgroup by visiting
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[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

How do you intend to do that? Do you have two keyboards and monitors
attached or do you have a second PC and you'll be using Remote Desktop
Connection, VNC, or some other rmote access tool?

I suppose VNC might work, but I used fast user switching when I tested it.
It might be possible using the multiple desktop feature some apps offer, but
I never tried it.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/



EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)




You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Oh, you mean with Fast User Switching.

I didn't get that from the post. Fast user Switching means only one user at
a time. The OP specifically said two "people" using the PC at the same
time. Evern with Fast User Switching, only one user is active.

 

[wallaby]

Hi Folks - this is composite reply to both BT's and DP's posts

I did not respond immediately as I wanted to get the User Accounts sorted
out and Outlook working with various mail accounts, I haven't put my real
mail accounts in yet, instead I'm using free accounts (POP, IMAP &
DeltaSynch) from Live, GMail, FastMail and my ISP. That seems to be working
fine.

By being logged in I did indeed mean via multiple user accounts and fast
user switching. Outlook profiles are not the only reason I do this, I need
it for the accounting package I use for both my business and the Not For
Profit (NFP) of which I'm secretary. For obviousd reeasons they must be
separated.

I do not agree with the statement - "Even with Fast User Switching, only
one user is active". Only one account will have "focus" (ie peripheral
control, via the ijnternal KVM switch), but many can be active. If I look
at the processes running on a system and I see some for User A, some for
User B then I have two active users. If User A has the focus then I dont
think that will stop a scheduled task starting up for user B. I can FUS out
of an account while its printing end of month reports and do my mail in the
other account, the reports keep printing.

It does not bother me that I only get OL notification of incoming mail for
the UA with focus, I rarely read mail as soon as it arrives, let alone
action it. If I have other instances of Outlook running in other accounts I
think they continue to fetch mail from their respective accounts.

Diane, you used the abbreviation VPC, by that do you mean a Virtual Personal
Computer running under something like VMWare. If so then I cannot begin to
contemplate that level of complexity. I live 9 hours drive from the
nearest city, my comms link is 256K satellite, which makes remote control an
impacticality. I don't have the knowledge to support a VM environment.

FUS on this Vista Box is more or less instantaneous between active User
Accounts, although the intermediate screen one gets using Win/L is more than
a little annoying. On XP FSU actually feels faster because there's no
intermediate screen, and keyboard navigation betwen signon accounts is
easier to drive than on Vista. IMO FUS on XP and Vista is a lot faster than
closing down OL and starting another OL with a different profile.

Now common calendar - I read through the stuff on slipstick, I actually
found it very confusing. I've concluded that one way, perhaps the only way
to have a common calendar across my 3 Vista User Accounts is to set up a
single Calendar on either Live or Google.

It bother's me that Live Calendar is still in beta. I wonder if there might
not be a Live Office Calendar on the horizon. I don't think Google calendar
is going to go way, and if Live Office does get a Calendar then one can
always switch.

Do you concur that in the absence of a local server then using a n Internet
calendar as the sharing medium is the way to go

Better yet would be if Live Mesh got a Silverlight Calendar. Have you seen
the Silverlight Health Care demo - well worth a look.

Thank you both for all the input.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

I must have a lot more little apps running or something - FUS was slow here.

On the calendar - yes, google or live calendar is probably the best solution
for sharing. I haven't used silverlight or mesh yet - I'm waiting for
version 3. By them there might be better uses for it than just as a
replacement for Flash.

On the Active/in focus stuff - I don't use it enough to know what all will
run when its not in focus. Based on my tests in WinXP, new mail won't
download but outlook does open to the second profile. It's not really a
problem IMHO since you aren't logged in to read it anyway. That was
really all I tested on it - when xp first came out I wanted to see if it
would work as a solution for people who needed to run two profiles at once.

If you use virtual pc (Microsoft's product) or VMWare you can have a second
computer running on your desktop and switch to it using the task bar. You
need to own second copy of an operating system to use it though. They are
most useful for people who test software, need to run software that only
runs on old versions of windows etc. For example, I have virtual machine on
this computer that has Outlook 2000 and one with outlook 2002 installed - if
someone asks a question about the old versions I can boot the virtual
machine and refresh my memory.

If FUS works for you, its probably a better solution as the virtual machines
can be sluggish.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/



EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)




You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.

 

[wallaby]

Thanks for feedback I'll give Google Calendar a go

Re Silverlight being beyond a Flash me too - click this
http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/

Re FUS : The number of little apps generally doesn't matter (I show 17
applets in my systray and I hide another dozen or so), its memory that
really matters, the number of services may also matter. I won't run a busy
XP on less than 1G (Win2000 is best for little busy systems) and I'm
thinking that 2G is needed for busy Vista. My definition of busy is
multiple flick to (Alt/Tab) applications - a browser or two, mail, news,
accounts, media player, photo management etc and various tools in the tray -
screen capture, dictionary lookups, sticky notes, messaging, downloaders, as
well as firwalls, malware scanners and HIPS apps.

Re VM ; I prefer using a physical test machine, then I might use a sofware
sandbox, eg I used sandboxie for firefox 3 beta testing. The VistaBox I'm
working on won't be used for testing anything, except perhaps the users
patience - strictly business.

I'll let you know how I get on with google cal.
--
wallaby

I must have a lot more little apps running or something - FUS was slow
here.

On the calendar - yes, google or live calendar is probably the best
solution for sharing. I haven't used silverlight or mesh yet - I'm waiting
for version 3. By them there might be better uses for it than just as a
replacement for Flash.

On the Active/in focus stuff - I don't use it enough to know what all will
run when its not in focus. Based on my tests in WinXP, new mail won't
download but outlook does open to the second profile. It's not really a
problem IMHO since you aren't logged in to read it anyway. That was
really all I tested on it - when xp first came out I wanted to see if it
would work as a solution for people who needed to run two profiles at
once.

If you use virtual pc (Microsoft's product) or VMWare you can have a
second computer running on your desktop and switch to it using the task
bar. You need to own second copy of an operating system to use it though.
They are most useful for people who test software, need to run software
that only runs on old versions of windows etc. For example, I have virtual
machine on this computer that has Outlook 2000 and one with outlook 2002
installed - if someone asks a question about the old versions I can boot
the virtual machine and refresh my memory.

If FUS works for you, its probably a better solution as the virtual
machines can be sluggish.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/



EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)




You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.