Outlook

[bdj]

I am running Outlook standard 2007 on Win XP sp3. I've be told that all my pst files will be disabled from writing to. I can create a new pst file and attach it to Outlook. I can remove it as well. And I can delete e-mail from my old pst files, but I cannot move any new e-mails to them. I've been told that there might be a register key that has blocked the write function to the pst files. Does anybody have any idea where I might look in the registry to change this.

Thanks,

BDJ

[Steve R Jones]

Which version are you using?
Who told the files will be disabled? Did they give a reason?

In theory, once you create new PST files you should be able to IMPORT the old info from the old pst files.

What is the beginning of your story? Guessing that one day outlook was working OK and then it stopped working?

[bdj]

I am running Outlook standard 2007 on Win XP sp3. The reason that was give is that there were issue regarding opening Outlook company wide. It was decited that preventing access to PST files was the answer, and that the Exchange server would have the mailbox databases enlarged to compensate for the lack of PST files.

bdj

[Steve R Jones]

Sorry I didn't see the version info...

Me thinks the IT people aren't telling the truth... Outlook has a built in repair tools....and opening issues would be on a machine by machine basis.

But, you can ask them about importing your current pst info into the exchange server....

[de_day]

It is a legal issue. They don't want "personal" mail files being used to store emails past the corporate standard retention period. If you have an email that is requested via court order, you have to produce it. If none such exists, being deleted through the corporate retention policy, then the company isn't liable.

You can get around it, but they may scan your box at night and delete them.

[bdj]

To Steve R. Jones;

I ran the diag. It told me that it repaired all problems it could find. I restared Outlook, no change.

To De_day;

There may be a real legal issue, but their reason was that the PST files impaired the quick opening of Outlook, and sometimes caused some corruption. I never experienced either in the 15 some years I've been on Outlook.

bdj.

[Taxmancometh]

You never see Thunderbird threads. At least not that I know of.

[de_day]

To Steve R. Jones;

I ran the diag. It told me that it repaired all problems it could find. I restared Outlook, no change.

To De_day;

There may be a real legal issue, but their reason was that the PST files impaired the quick opening of Outlook, and sometimes caused some corruption. I never experienced either in the 15 some years I've been on Outlook.

bdj.

I've never experienced that either... I have had one get corrupted by a power outage.. but that's it.

[bdj]

Thanks for the responses, but I still would like to know if there is a registry entry that could stop writing to a pst file.

bdj

[Epidemic]

A. PST files are a burden in many environments. They're hard to manage, hard to perform discovery on, and prone to loss when stored on local machines. Many companies now use archiving solutions at the mail server, such as the Exchange 2010 archiving functionality, to avoid the need for user PST files.

To phase out PST files, take a two phase approach. First, you can stop users from writing to PST files but still allow them to read from then. You can then totally block PST files.

You make these changes using two policy settings that are found in the Outlook Group Policy template under User Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Microsoft Outlook <version number> Miscellaneous, PST Settings. The settings are called Prevent users from adding new content to existing PST files and Prevent users from adding PSTs to Outlook profiles and/or prevent using Sharing-Exclusive PSTs.

If you don't want to use Group Policy, you can achieve the same result using registry changes. The keys are found under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Offi ce\<version, e.g. 12.0 or 14.0>\Outlook (set value DisablePST to 1 to disable the use of PSTs) and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Offi ce\<version, e.g. 12.0 or 14.0>\Outlook\PST (set value PstDisableGrow to 1 to disable writing to PSTs).

According to this guy This is how you disable them. I guess you can possibly assume this is how they did it.

[bdj]

Epidemic,

Thanks. The registry entry worked. I just changed the 1 to 0, now I can write to my pst files.

bdj