Setting Outlook via group policy

[marvin]

Hi

 

Just started at a school where they have different versions of outlook, outlook was actually manually installed on all machines and some of the useres were set up to read their emails via outlook but all settings were entered manually.

 

Now what i am facing is how i could setup something via GPO to do this for other users?

At the moment if the users move machines, they check their emails via outlook web access and it woul dbe easier if they could just read it without doing this.

 

Hope this makes sense and that someone can help me on this.

 

P.S: forgot to mention that we have office 2002, 2003 and 2007 so guess this won't be that easy!

[Michael]

Presumably if you have OWA running this is better and easier for users, rather than using Microsoft Outlook? This must also mean you have an Exchange server somewhere.

 

I can't say i've ever setup Outlook for multiple users using different versions of Office because this (as you say) will most likely be problematic and not worth the hassle.

[Jamman960]

I have a script setup that prepares each users outlook 2003 profile when they logon so that its ready to use when they launch Outlook, I'd presume the same is availible for 2002/7 so as a worst case senario I guess you could run a script for each as part of the logon process so that they're ready to use whatever version is availible on the machine.

 

I'll dig out the script I'm using for you.

 

James

[marvin]

Cheers James, i can give it a go and see if it works!

[FN-GM]

to Automatically configure outlook for exchange use a program called Richprofile when you login, here is the download: RichProfile

 

run the program with the /? switch on to look at the options you can use

[Jamman960]

FN-GM beat me to it - was just about to post that its RichProfile I'm using here. I can't find anywhere that sugests its specifically for Outlook 2003 so theres a chance it'll work for all

 

James

[marvin]

How did you set this up then? Do i need to make sure richprofile is available on all machines or can this be setup from the server?

[rvdmast]

You can just run it from the NETLOGON share or any network location that's available to everyone.

[DrPerceptron]

You can also setup PRF's for Outlook 2003 (which is how we did it)

 

For 2k7 though, if you use the Mail client in Control Panel (sometimes Outlook will do it, other times it won't) it should be able to pick up all the relevant settings itself and configure properly for the user.

[zag]

I found you can't use group policy or mandatory profiles if you want to use the Outlook client.

 

I just let my users manually configure outlook 2007 if they move machines, they just click next a few times on the wizard when it pops up with all the relevant settings.