Redirect My Docs

[Chuckster]

In a GPO I have redirected the My Documents folder according to where the user is based, e.g. \\servername\sharename\username

The home directory is mapped as H: drive. With myself as a user, I've tried redirecting the My Documents folder by simply entering H:\ in the Folder Redirection and noticed that this takes no affect and still remains as \\servername\sharename\username

I don't like the the idea that when users go to their My Documents folder and then go into another folder, the address bar gets displayed as this: \\servername\sharename\username\folder\etc.

Is there a workaround to this? How can I simply redirect the My Documents folder simply as H:\ rather than putting in the UNC path?

[dwhyte85]

This used to work, it's with the registry though:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\

Or changing the properties on My Docs manually to point to the drive letter :-(

[Chuckster]

I would like to do this globally across all users.

I've pointed the 'Personal' bit as H:\ but this hasn't worked.

[srochford]

Pretty sure you can't do folder redirection with a group policy to "h:" - the folder redirection group policy gets executed before drive letters are mapped and it falls over.

You should be able to make the change to the registry with a login script

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")
oShell.regwrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal","H:\","REG_EXPAND_SZ"

(NB - you should use "user shell folders" rather than "shell folders"; at some point MS will stop supporting the shell folders bit - it's a left over from pre-Windows 95!)

Why not just let it redirect to the UNC? It should work for all software you have and, assuming you have your permissions right, there's nothing to lose by letting users know where their files are stored (and if your permissions aren't right then ...)

[Michael]

Under Folder Redirection, set the policy to Basic and Redirect to the user's home directory

Share the folders you want to map as "My Documents" as username$ so if you had someone called Jo Bloggs, in Active Directory the path would read \\SERVERNAME\JBLOGGS$

To keep things simple, call the folder JBLOGGS and share it as JBLOGGS$ If you have a lot of users to share, use a free application like Autoshare.

[srochford]

You don't need to set up individual shares - when you create your user, you can specify the home folder as (say) \\server\home\%username% AD will then work out what the folder should be called and create it. the user will then get a home folder of \\server\home\jbloggs or whatever

The time when creating separate shares is useful is if you have Macs or Linux; neither is happy "deep mapping" (ie mapping to \\server\share\folder rather than \\server\share)

[TimH]

Is there a workaround to this? How can I simply redirect the My Documents folder simply as H:\ rather than putting in the UNC path?

Do it the other way around, don't redirect MyDocs to homedir, create homedir from MyDocs, which is set by redirection policy.

I've just set ours up for next year's intake, I set folder redirection to \\ourschool\students\2009, if you get permissions/settings right, there is no needs to create shares and set permissions for each student nor even create folders.

On first logon the MyDocs folder will be created in the above DFS share then our logon script does (amongst other things!);

Set oshell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
set objWN = wscript.createobject("wscript.network")
objwN.MapNetworkDrive "M:", oshell.specialfolders("MyDocuments")

(can you tell I started from 2 different samples!)

We use "m:" as hoMe for those dodgy old apps that don't like UNC paths.

Actually I went a bit mad setting up for intake to 2014, saves having to remember/look up the special permissions needed for the auto MyDocs craetion to work.

If you google "folder redirection permissions" you'll find varying samples of permissions to set - we have domains admins full control, creator owner set not to have take ownership/change permissions.

tim