Offline files are one without turning them on

[news.microsoft.com]

My users have not specifically gone and setup offline files, but on a
majority of the computers they are now syncing up offline files. I
don't want this.

In the users account we map a Z: Drive to \\Fileserver\%USERNAME% and set
user profiles to map My Documents to Z: so everyone stores their data on the
network. We notice that these are one of the folders that are syncing
automatically as well as things in My Network Places.

I do have some laptop users that do sync up so I don't want to affect them.
I know I can use a GPO to disable offline files, but users of offline and
non-offline are scattered throughout my containers so it would be too
difficult to have the GPO do it.

Is this something that is just on by default and is there a way to fix this
without messing up my laptop users?

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was 4/4/2008 12:10 PM, and on a whim,
news.microsoft.com pounded out on the keyboard:

My users have not specifically gone and setup offline files, but on a
majority of the computers they are now syncing up offline files. I
don't want this.

In the users account we map a Z: Drive to \\Fileserver\%USERNAME% and set
user profiles to map My Documents to Z: so everyone stores their data on the
network. We notice that these are one of the folders that are syncing
automatically as well as things in My Network Places.

I do have some laptop users that do sync up so I don't want to affect them.
I know I can use a GPO to disable offline files, but users of offline and
non-offline are scattered throughout my containers so it would be too
difficult to have the GPO do it.

Is this something that is just on by default and is there a way to fix this
without messing up my laptop users?

OF are not enabled by default. If they are set on workstations, someone
has enabled them. On domains I admin, we map My Documents to network
drives also, and enable OF for laptops so the files are always
available. It is not a perfect method for that use, as users with large
amounts of files wait too long for scanning, and iTunes gets screwed up
when its default folders within My Documents are on network drives.

Someone suggested a GP to enable OF, but I don't believe that would work
because there isn't a way to determine if it's a workstation or laptop.

--
Terry R.

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