Colin McKenzie said:
Could you please tell me how you sync the 'personal folders' used
with a 'home' profile' and the standard folders used with Exchange
server? Am I right in thinking that 'enable off line folders' only
applies to the exchange folders in the 'office' profile?
many thanks
Colin
I don't have access to Exchange mail anymore and just use SMTP servers
via broadband and dial-up. According to the Help in Outlook 2002:
Create an Offline Folder file (.ost)
1. On the Tools menu, click E-Mail Accounts, click View or change
existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
2. In the Outlook processes e-mail for these accounts in the following
order list, click Microsoft Exchange Server, and then click Change.
3. Click More Settings.
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Offline Folder File Settings.
5. In the File box, type the path to the file you want to use as the
Offline Folder file.
The default file name is outlook.ost. If this file already exists,
you are prompted for a new name.
Since you are changing the settings for an Exchange-based e-mail
account, my presumption is that an .ost file is used only for an
Exchange-based e-mail account
(
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;296080). I
remember being able to download messages off the Exchange server into my
.pst file so I could read them despite the Exchange server going down or
becoming unreachable within the corporate network. I also recall that
Microsoft recommends NOT to use .pst files on mapped (network) drives
and to use .ost files instead
(
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305519). It's
been too long since I had to use Exchange as my mail server.
I haven't done sync'ing between profiles but here's my guess:
- Open the Mail applet in Control Panel.
- Click Show Profiles.
- Create a new mail profile. A new .pst file gets created for that new
profile.
- With the new profile highlighted, click Properties.
- In the Mail Setup dialog, click Data Files.
- Click Add and navigate to the .pst file for your other [old] mail
profile.
- After adding the old .pst file to your new profile, click Settings.
- Change the Name of the information store (i.e., .pst file). This will
become evident later when you need to select it as the one to receiving
incoming e-mails. Each information store (data file) should have a
unique name so you can differentiate them later. Having them all named
"Personal Folders" makes it quite difficult to tell them apart.
- Click Close to exit the Data Files dialog and return to the Mail Setup
dialog (which is still for your new profile).
- Click E-Mail Accounts.
- Select "View or change existing e-mail accounts".
- In the "Deliver new e-mail to the following location" drop-down
listbox, select your old .pst file.
- Click Finish to exit the E-mail Account dialog (and return to the Mail
Setup dialog). You get a warning that you have changed the information
store used to save your e-mail, calender, and so on. Click Close the
return to the Mail dialog.
- Select the "Prompt for a profile to be used" so when you start Outlook
you get prompted for which profile you want to use at that time.
You now have 2 profiles with each using the same information store (.pst
file) for delivery of e-mail. Since they share the same contents, your
calendar, journal, contacts, and so on will be the same regardless of
which profile you log under. Only the e-mail accounts and the servers
configured for them will be different.
Since you could define the same Exchange-based e-mail account in each
profile (i.e., they all point to the same server and mailbox), I would
think that would keep you using the same Exchange mailbox in each
profile. Similarly, you could define multiple e-mail accounts with
exactly the same POP and SMTP servers (but then the mail profiles would
be duplicates and superfluous) but you could then define different
information stores for the same servers (which would actually be
un-sync'ing the mail received while under one profile from the e-mail
received while under the other profile, and the same for calender,
contacts, etc.) I suppose if you wanted to use separate mail profiles
to the same e-mail servers to separate your Contacts that this would be
one way. Although you have multiple mail profiles, the e-mail accounts
within them can be for the same or different servers, and they can share
information stores (.pst files) or use separate ones. You can wind up a
very complicated ball of configuration spaghetti. Since you can have
only one mail profile open at a time, you don't have to worry that 2 or
more profiles share the same .pst file.
Now if Microsoft could add an option to a connectoid (a network or
dial-up connection) to specify which mail profile to make the default
when that connectoid is active then switching to the correct mail
servers would occur automatically depending on which connectoid you
used. I know that I can have more than one connectoid active at a time,
like the LAN (cable Internet) and dial-up (modem to ISP) can be
concurrently active. This will often cause problems because you
probably don't have your host configured to operate as a gateway and
your network and/or ISP probably doesn't behave well or like you
operating as a gateway, so Microsoft really needs an option to specify
mutual exclusion amongst connectoids.
