Sharing a PST with Outlook XP

[David]

I have one user that would like to have access to all of his Outlook data in
two locations. His pst file is approx 390MB. I moved his pst to a location
on the network, and his Outlook works fine when he is connected directly to
our work network. The problem happens when he is in his second location.
I'm having him VPN in and access the PST across the VPN. He is unable to
receive new email in this configuration and reading mail off this pst has
been causing lag and lockups. I am considering archiving some of his old
data to get his PST file down to a much smaller size, but I do not know if
this will fix the situation. Has anyone done any similar configurations?
What should I do to make this work more efficiently? Any suggestions on a
better configuration? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I have one user that would like to have access to all of his Outlook
data in two locations. His pst file is approx 390MB. I moved his
pst to a location on the network, and his Outlook works fine when he
is connected directly to our work network. The problem happens when
he is in his second location. I'm having him VPN in and access the
PST across the VPN. He is unable to receive new email in this
configuration and reading mail off this pst has been causing lag and
lockups. I am considering archiving some of his old data to get his
PST file down to a much smaller size, but I do not know if this will
fix the situation. Has anyone done any similar configurations? What
should I do to make this work more efficiently? Any suggestions on a
better configuration? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

PSTs on network shares are unsupported and can lead to data loss and PST
corruption.

Why not have him use offline folders on the laptop? That tends to work
better over a VPN (at least it does for us).

 

[David]

Do you mean Windows offline folders or some sort of Outlook offline folders?
I have never used that type of configuration in Outlook. What steps would I
have to do in configuring this? Thanks for the response!

 

[Brian Tillman]

Do you mean Windows offline folders or some sort of Outlook offline
folders?

The latter.

I have never used that type of configuration in Outlook.
What steps would I have to do in configuring this?

What type of account?

 

[David]

Pop3

The latter.


What type of account?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Pop3

No offline folders, then. Sorry. I don't have any other ideas.

 

[David]

Oh I know what u mean. If I was using IMAP I could leave the messages on
the server. Right?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Oh I know what u mean. If I was using IMAP I could leave the
messages on the server. Right?

Sort of. With IMAP, the messages stay on the server and are cached locally,
but you can't see them unless you're connected to the IMAP server. If you
were using Exchange, you could use offline folders, which means your client
would cache the Exchange contents and allow you to operate as though you
were online even if you are not.

 

[David]

Yeah my boss is using this experience as an excuse to push for us getting
exhcange. I'm very excited. The web interface is so nice. Thanks again
for your help.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Yeah my boss is using this experience as an excuse to push for us
getting exhcange. I'm very excited. The web interface is so nice.

When out of the office, our execs use and like offline mode via Outlook.
The can read and respond to their mail as though they were on line. When
they get to their hotels, the connect up via VPN and everything they've done
gets uploaded to the Exchange server while all new messages get downloaded.

We've just implemented OWA for the general employee, too, making the
Exchange mailbox available without needing a VPN.