PST file locations

[Hal Berenson]

Backgrround: We are building a Terminal Server farm and use Roaming
Profiles. When a user logs on to one of the TS we need them to get back
their complete environment. At the moment this is not possible, partially
due to Outlook settings.

The problem we are running into is that Outlook puts .PST files into the
Local Settings\Application Data folder and with Roaming Profiles these don't
roam (meaning they are at best unavailable on other machines and given our
settings they are just deleted when the user logs out). There is a Group
Policy setting for the default PST location and we use it, however this just
applies to user created PST files. Automatically created PST files that act
as cache's for Hotmail or IMAP mail systems still get created in Local
Settings\Application Data. I understand the logic in considering these to
be easily recreatable caches, but the logic is flawed by:

1) Client rules (and who knows what else) are flushed when Outlook discovers
that the PST file is gone. So our users lose the rules on their IMAP mail
accounts every time they logoff.

2) Accessing these files on a share over the network, or having them copied
as part of the roaming profile, is still faster than completely rebuilding
them every time the user runs Outlook for the first time after logging in.
The speed advantage of an SMB file transfer over email protocols is just
tremendous.

So, does anyone know how to get Outlook to store these automatically created
..PST files somewhere other than in Local Settings? Can we get Outlook to
store them according to the default PST location policy settable via the
GPO?

Thanks!

 

[Andre]

if you could copy them over, you have to remember they'd need to be copied
back for the next time they log in .. possibly from a different computer?

it might seem like an ok idea to have it copy over when the profile is
loaded, in which case you just put it in the my documents folder and have
outlook point to that .. however realisticly .. pst files tend to get big,
and you're gonna find users complaining about majorly slow logon/logoff
times.. would you want a 200mb profile to load :|

It would be nice if they'd just network share... hmm i wonder if they'd see
it on a mapped drive? (just thinking out loud) but if the user closed or
didn't renew that mapped drive, you'd be in the same spot...

 

[NA]

So, does anyone know how to get Outlook to store these automatically
created .PST files somewhere other than in Local Settings? Can we get
Outlook to store them according to the default PST location policy
settable via the GPO?

Outlook Profiler.