Folder Reidrection Through Group Policy - PST Error

Hey everyone. We just enabled Folder Redirection for some users on our domain, so we have their data on our NAS, as opposed to local machines.

When users sync (on logout) an error message saying that PST files cannot be made offline shows up.

Thats fine by us, we understand due to the file nature, PSTs dont' work well in the network environment, but we are looking for a way to not have the error show up.

So, we need to either set that PSTs are 'only online' (meaning, it does not try to sync it locally) or to just make the error disapear.

Any ideas?

I've read that before.

I believe, and correct me if I am wrong, that the midification there will then cause PSTs to be synced locally and on the server.

That is the 'behavior' that MS wishes to avoid. We are fine with that, we are fine with the files just staying on the server and not being attempted to be synced. We do not want the files to stay local however.

Please do correct me if I am wrong, however, and that that change keeps the file 'online'

Thanks

You are correct. I must have misread your post. That change in the KB document looks like it will sync the pst files locally and server. Sorry about that. I will see what else I might can dig up.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Even if it is as 'simple' as supression of the error message, thats fine.

It copies the file to the NAS, it works off the NAS, it just gives an error indicating it cannot sync it locally. We don't care , for the most part, that it is not synced locally...

Thanks again.

To eliminate this I used an OfficeXP policy to specify that the PST files be stored on a seperate share that has Offline Files disabled.

Brian-

Can you explain a bit more?

Right now, some users have PST files in My Documents and some Under Local Settings.

We'd like the PST to reside server side, and do not care if it is cached locally. (Since that isn't what MS wants, thats fine)

But we just need a way to get the message to be supressed or windows to not try to look at the PST file for caching.

I take it your email server has no collaboration support? No need to worry about PST files after that.

Pardon my ignorance, collaboration support?

We're running exchange 2003 enterprise...

In our organization we have all the user's PSTs in a shared folder on the network. This resides on one of the file servers.
In outlook, if you go to "Tools", "Services" then "Add", select "Personal Folders". Then type in the path to the shared folder and type \*Filename*.pst (eg \\server\share\filename.pst). This will now create a new pst on the share and the user will access it from there. This way you can backup the PSTs from the server and cut down on profiel sizes (if u use roaming profiles).

enforcer17 said:

In our organization we have all the user's PSTs in a shared folder on the network. This resides on one of the file servers.
In outlook, if you go to "Tools", "Services" then "Add", select "Personal Folders". Then type in the path to the shared folder and type \*Filename*.pst (eg \\server\share\filename.pst). This will now create a new pst on the share and the user will access it from there. This way you can backup the PSTs from the server and cut down on profiel sizes (if u use roaming profiles).

Click to expand...

yeah, i was bascially going to say the same thing as i'm having trouble understanding why there's a problem. you don't even need to create a new PST and deal with that. simply copy the PST to a server, then go into the user's outlook folder and close the personal folder they have open. then go to file --> open and select personal folder. locate the copy you placed on the network. boom, you're done. there is no synching going on- you just store their PST somewhere aside from C:\Documents and Settings\stupiduser\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook\filename.pst

this is a problem if you need to do it for 10K users, but it is possible and is really the best way to do it i think.

goo luck,
big boi

On 2003 Server, and 2000 for that matter, you have the option to turn off Offline folders for your shares. Offline folders caches, on the local machine, copies of files that are on shares that allow Offline folders. When I set mine up I set the users roaming profiles to save to a share that had offline files turned on. That way they could access their "My Documents" even without connectivity to the server. Their network home folder though, the H: drive, had the Offline folders option shut off for the share. The solution was just to create a group policy that told Outlook to automatically save their outlook.pst in the H: drive instead.

Another file type is .mdb, access databases. In those cases I simply inform the users that they will have to save those to their H: drive instead of My Documents. Either that or click on that error message every time.

Brian Taylor

P.S. You could also just disable Offline Files on the share that is holding your profiles. But that may have some unintended consequences.

Bidy Daddy-

the issue is we do not want to migrate PST files to another new share. We'd like to just Group Policy My Docs and Local Settings redirection (the default location of PST files) and then be done with it. With 200 people in our network, to individually move the users PST file to our 'offline' user drive would be a pain in the ass.

Brian-

Is it possible to just turn off the 'offline file' for PSTs. Meaning, My Documents is still cached, but PSTs are not? (even if they reside in my documents)

Thanks again.

Ugh, the woes of pst files.

Thats the majority of my job, relocating them and mapping them back into Outlook.

We are phasing them out (trying to anyways), just importing them, dumping the info into the inbox and deleting the pst, makes a much easier world.

Wish we could do that.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of 'pack rat' users (some of them need to be) and literally would have mailboxes that were more than 5GB. Our head legal counsel has multiple PSTs which are about 12GB in total.

Even though we have exchange enterprise and no limit on our information store, we don't want to deal with multiple GB mailboxes across the board...

Try this:

The Offline Files configuration is done at the share level. So, as I mentioned in my PS, you could shut it off for the entire share. But that will mean your users entire profiles will not use Offline Files which can be a problem if connectivity to the server is lost and you are deleting cached copies of roaming profiles. I once had a situation where my server was down and a few people logged in anyway. The workstations allowed them to log in using cached credentials, and since I delete cached profiles, the workstation set them up with a default profile. The server comes up and then when the users log out it overwrites some of their profile on the server with default settings. It wasn't everything, but a few things got screwed up for about a dozen users.

So, you could shut off Offline Files for the entire share, but I recommend testing that in your environment first, and making sure there arent any unintended effects. Of course I think the best solution is just to move the PST files to another share. I realize it requires work, but that is the kind of operation that could easily be done with a batch file in the login script. Then just a set of instructions to send out to people for when they try to open Outlook and it can't find their PST anymore. Then to prevent it from coming up with new users set up a group policy that automatically saves it into the new location.

Brian Taylor

moving the files should not be a big deal. simply add a line in your logon script after all your drive mappings are done to copy C:\*.pst to the user's home folder. the harder part would be then remapping outlook, but there's probably a way to automate that as well.

you're right though- simply having GP force the pst files to remain offline would be easier.

Just a little bump...

Save manual moving, have not had any luck...

You really only have 2 options on this. Either disable Offline Files on the share they are currently stored on, or move them to a share that has Offline Files disabled.

Brian Taylor

I too would tell you to disable offline files for their profile share. As long as you don't clear locally cached copies of profiles at logoff the user will really miss nothing by this. As long as their My Documents folder is being redirected that is. My users have their's redirected to their H: drive.

Yeah, we may consider just disabled offline folders then. I was hoping there would be just some way of supressing the error message, as that is all it is.

We just liked cached copies, because, it was another layer of data intengrity, in case of a server crash. While we do backup the NAS, it is just another layer of protection.

But, I will look at eliminating that...