Outlook on two machines

[Rob A]

Hi,
Is it possible to use two different machines on the same home network and
share the .pst file?
I am running xp home sp2, one machine has office '03 and the other '07 beta

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

..pst files can only be accessed by one instance of Outlook at a time.
Having said that, if you have a shared drive, you can move the .pst to that
drive and configure Outlook to use it from each machine. However, I would
advise against using your default .pst file in the Beta of Office 2007 - too
many things can go wrong and the .pst file is not that robust to risk your
vital information.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Rob A asked:

| Hi,
| Is it possible to use two different machines on the same home network
| and share the .pst file?
| I am running xp home sp2, one machine has office '03 and the other
| '07 beta

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

sharing a pst across a network is not supported and can corrupt the pst.

 

[Guest]

Has anybody tried sharing outlook.pst between 2 computers, one running Office
2003 and the other 2007?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Why would you want to do that?

Patrick Schmid

 

[Guest]

I have 2 computers, one with XP and Outlook 2003, the other with the Vista
Beta and the Outlook 2007 beta. They are on a LAN so sharing the outlook.pst
file is not an issue. It would be more convenient to be able to do email from
either (but not both at the same time) computer. It seems it boils down to
does Outlook 2007 do things to the PST file that Outlook 2003 cannot handle?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Not really. You can share the PST between 2003 and 2007. However, you
are not exactly heading towards a configuration that I would call stable
or reliable.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I've accessed test PST files using both versions but it's never a wise idea
to ever use a production PST file against beta software. There are no
guarantees. How bad would you feed if something did corrupt a production PST
file?

It's also not supported and can lead to all sorts of problems if you access
a PST file over a network. A PST file should be local.