Tool or method for managing Outlook 2003 profiles

[denveritguy780]

We have some computers that are shared among users on different
shifts-- some are shared by as many as 15-20 users. My problem is that
whenever I have to put a new software image on the computers all the
user profiles go away. Each time this occurs I have to meet with each
individual user on each shift and sit down with them so they can login
and I then set up their Outlook profiles and point them to the correct
PST files, etc.

Does anyone know of a tool to do one of the following:

1) Backup and restore the profiles settings in the registry. I have
had limited success with this by attempting manual registry exports
and imports.

2) Manage the Outlook profile settings and allow me to setup each user
in advance when the computer is re-imaged?

What do other people do? I find it hard to believe that all admins
take this much time to set up Outlook for each individual.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

There is a lot more to the Outlook mail profile then just some registry
settings.

In general, administrators deploy a customized Office/Outlook setup which
already contain the settings for the mail profile. In addition you'd use
Roaming Profiles so that users can log on to any computer and keep their
settings (not just for Outlook).

Another way to go would be to deploy a separate prf-file containing the
settings.

See the ORK for more information.

 

[denveritguy780]

There is a lot more to the Outlook mail profile then just some registry
settings.

In general, administrators deploy a customized Office/Outlook setup which
already contain the settings for the mail profile. In addition you'd use
Roaming Profiles so that users can log on to any computer and keep their
settings (not just for Outlook).

Another way to go would be to deploy a separate prf-file containing the
settings.

See the ORK for more information.












- Show quoted text -

I have tried getting roaming profiles to work but so far no luck. We
are unfortunately in an NT4 domain but with Win 2003 servers (other
then domain controllers) and mostly XP workstations but with some NT4
workstations thrown in. Whenever I try to create a new test account
with a roaming profile I then go and login with that account at a
workstation and I get an error message about not being able to find
some file and then it logs me in but puts everything on the local
drive.

I've been expolring the ORK documentation but maybe I'm missing
something. What I am really trying to do is find a tool that will
allow me to login to a machine and run the tool to extract the Outlook
profiles for all users that have profiles on that machine. That way I
can put the profiles back when I have to build a new software image.
So far all I've found in Outlook and in the ORK are tools to save a
single user's settings and tools to setup defaults for user's
profiles. Any ideas?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Which mail account type are you using?
My answer targeted the issue of automating the configuration of Outlook, no
matter who logs into machine. This will take away the need to now back up
the current profiles and then recreate them afterwards. You can do this via
the ORK. Even when other deployment methods do not fit within your domain
configuration, you can still deploy a prf-file with the settings

But to answer your question of backing up the existing configuration and
restoring it on another machine; you should use a specialized tool for this
which can make the correct abstractions of the dependencies of the mail
profile on the current machine and recreate them based on the new machine.
I've had great results with ABF Outlook Backup for that. Even when the
versions of Outlook and Windows were not the same, it restored the
configurations without an issue.

http://addins.howto-outlook.com/abf_outlookbackup
If you decide to order use ABF-1HTJ8 to get a discount.

 

[NA]

Does anyone know of a tool to do one of the following:

1) Backup and restore the profiles settings in the registry. I have
had limited success with this by attempting manual registry exports
and imports.

2) Manage the Outlook profile settings and allow me to setup each user
in advance when the computer is re-imaged?

What do other people do? I find it hard to believe that all admins
take this much time to set up Outlook for each individual.

Consider using Outlook Profiler ... it does not do exactly what you want but
it should do what you need