Outlook 2003 auto creating PSTs when unable to connect to netwiork

[joe_d90]

I have an ongoing problem with Outlook within the company I work for,
particularly (but not uniquely) when used on laptops running Vista Business
(also happening on desktops running Windows XP Professional). Occassionally
network drives take a while to map (or not at all) and the Outlook data files
for everyone are stored on the server. When the drives are not mapped, rather
than advising unable to open data files, Outlook is creating new data files
(including an archive folder) on the local drive (including setting the newly
created local pst as default folder for mail delivery). This is not an
isolated incident as I have repeatedly gone into the default location for the
pst (within Documents and Settings) and deleted the mail and archive files
but they continue to be recreated when the network folders cannot be located!

Any idea how I stop this happening? If relevant, we use Mdaemon on our
server to manage mail

Cheers
Joe

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello]

If I am understanding you correctly, this is expected behavior. Storing a
..PST file on a network share is an unsupported and dangerous setup due to the
increased risk of file corruption if the file is in use when the network
share drops. I'm not sure why you are not getting a notification when the
user opens Outlook and it can't find the default .PST, but you really should
look into storing the .PST files on the users' local machines anyway.