Roaming Profiles & Redirected Folder Help ...

[Dave]

Greetings,

I hade tried to set up Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection (App Data,
Desktop, etc). It all *appeared* to work fine until I noticed that the
email wasn't synchronized among the client machines. OL Express is the
email client on our machines. Does anyone have any ideas why OLE doesn't
take to the synchronization? Where does OLE store the email these days?
Several versions back I knew it was in the App Data folder, but it doesn't
appear to be there on these machines. Maybe that's a clue?

The network in question is a small home network with several WinXPpro
clients and a Win2k3 DC.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Dave]

Hello Again,

I seem to have found part of the answer, but I still am missing some
information. I found that Outlook Express is keeping the mailbox in a
second Application Data folder that is *inside* a local settings folder.
Now the $64 million question is Can I simply change the store location in
the tools...options...maintence menu to a folderthat is caught by
redirection and synchronization?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Mike Rosado [MSFT]]

Hi Dave,

I'm by no means an expert in this subject matter of Roaming Profile,
Redirect Folders nor Outlook, but I'll try to assist you to the best of my
ability. From reading the following it clearly states that what you're
trying to do is unsupported:

257831 How to move your personal folders file in Outlook 2000 that is
installed
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=257831

This article describes how to move a personal folder (.pst) file to another
location. You can move your .pst file to another location on your local hard
drive. Moving a .pst file to a network share is not supported.

--
Hope this helps,
Mike Rosado
Windows 2000 MCSE + MCDBA
Microsoft Enterprise Platform Support
Windows NT/2000/2003 Cluster Technologies

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-----Original Message-----

 

[Dave]

Hello Mike,

Thanks for the propt response. I am using Outlook Express, but I suspect
that the answer is much the same. I moved the store folder to a redirected
folder using the opetions menu on one of my test systems. It took, sort of.
The common files are availabe to each computer but the user fails
synchronization on exit because windows is complaining that the mailbox
files cannot be made available offline.

What about a pair of startup/shut down scripts to copy the folder around
manually? Where would I find a sample script to copy the Outlook express
mailbox to another secure share (not involved in the redirection effort) at
shut-down and a second script to copy from the share at startup? This would
essentially amount to backing-up the identity to a network share and
restoring it at each start-up.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Jeff Knapp]

What about a pair of startup/shut down scripts to copy the folder
around manually? Where would I find a sample script to copy the
Outlook express mailbox to another secure share (not involved in the
redirection effort) at shut-down and a second script to copy from the
share at startup? This would essentially amount to backing-up the
identity to a network share and restoring it at each start-up.

Dave,

I've done this for some of my clients who use Outlook sans Exchange (not OE,
but I suspect its the same) and it's ugly and could cause your users to
never log off since it takes so dang long.

I use a simple XCOPY command to copy the folders up and down to a hidden
share. Basicially, I use

xcopy %userprofile%\local settings\etc.\*.pst \\server\share$\%username
\*.pst /d /c

/d only does a copy if the date stamp is later. This allows me to not copy a
500MB PST file if the user didn't go into Outlook that day. I don't know if
that theory will fly with .dbx files, but I suspect.

I might instead script OEQB which has command line parameters for doing
backups and restores...

http://www.oehelp.com/OEBackup/Default.aspx

I've not used it in unattended mode; but work great in attended mode. I use
it to move users all the time.

But in any event, I found my users to complain easily about the time it
takes to log on and log off. I try to explain that if they kept their e-
mail lean and mean they wouldn't have these issues... but you know people
and their e-mail.

Jeff