sonic1485 Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 I have been trying to get Offline Files working in our environment for aaages when I get a spare moment (ha!) with mixed results. I have been given some dedicated time this week to concentrate on it and I felt I was getting somewhere but then I reached another stumbling block and so I thought I would see how other people have it working. We are running Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 clients. I have made a policy for Folder Redirection to direct documents to the user’s home directory (%HOMESHARE%%HOMEPATH%) and a policy for Offline Files to administrativley assign offline files to the same location. When our test Teacher account logs on it appears that offline files is working. I can pull out the network cable and browse the folder structure of the users area and create new subfolders. The problem I’m hitting now is when I create or try to open an Office 2013 document. I get the errors “We’re sorry. We can’t open Normal.dotm because we found a problem with it’s contents” and “Word cannot open the existing file (Normal.dotm)” I started thinking maybe there was a setting I needed to change in Office but thought I’d ask how you guys do offline files incase there was a problem with the GPO setups I was doing.
Joanne Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 I have offline files here with 2008 R2 and Windows 7. It is a never-ending series of problems. Mainly that it doesn't sync automatically. Also now and again the teacher will be trying to save a document and it says that the location doesn't exist... even though they are browsing fine to that folder and fully connected. I have yet to find out why this happens. My advice would be to avoid offline files and use usb drives!!!
fairm010 Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 As Joanne suggests, we have it disabled and use HAP and Remote Desktop Services with RD Web Access. Offline Files isn't worth the agro is causes!
Snuffkins Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Not that it's helping you resolve the issues you have, but I'd 3rd that. Offline files are more trouble than they're worth... Since we updated to 2012 R2 we've been using Direct Access, which is proving pretty successful and might be worth a look in the future when the time comes to move to 2012. The clients do need to be running Enterprise for Direct Access though.
spc-rocket Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Not that it's helping you resolve the issues you have, but I'd 3rd that. Offline files are more trouble than they're worth... Since we updated to 2012 R2 we've been using Direct Access, which is proving pretty successful and might be worth a look in the future when the time comes to move to 2012. The clients do need to be running Enterprise for Direct Access though. Hiya, Just wondering what settings you guys are using for direct access i.e one NIC or two nics on DA server. we have set this up with 1 NIC and the clients are connecting but nothing shows up on the connect clients/monitoring section. i must have missed a step somewhere, also the its slow as well on good broadband connect. any tips would be very welcome. Thanks, Ash.
sonic1485 Posted March 12, 2015 Author Posted March 12, 2015 Thanks for the feedback everyone. I will go back to my manager with these opinions and see what he says. My other colleague has investigated Home Access Plus in the past so maybe this is the preferred method to go. The annoying thing is that I set this up within minutes on XP at my old school and I was determined to do it with 7. I shall wave my white flag
Sagima Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 I've never been completely happy with offline files - it seems to conflict or just stop far too often. We recommend using webdav here although over Easter I'm going to look into Work Folders for the few people who are still on offline files because their home internet is so poor.
Joanne Posted March 12, 2015 Posted March 12, 2015 Yeah if you do have to do offline files, instead of syncing the whole users home directory, create a folder named Offline Files in the users home directory and just sync that. Although not sure how you would do this en masse. I'm going to have to shake things up soon, because currently there is a lot of data on laptops and not on the server!
Guyhd Posted March 13, 2015 Posted March 13, 2015 (edited) Check user/group has read access on all folders on the UNC path directory structure. Yes - this will cause you a privacy headache if your user home directories are inheriting permissions from the folder root. Windows offline files is horrible! http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2512089 Edited March 13, 2015 by Guyhd
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