Outlook 2010, a sensible decision

[Dos_Box]

I'm running the Office 2010 Beta and have just noticed where Outlook now places the Outlook data file, No longer is it buried deep within the user profile, but in My Documents\Outlook files.

Very convienient and easy to manage, so they will be removing this feature before going gold then

[bossman]

@Dos_Box:

 

You bet!!

[john]

ooooh! That's good to know, hoo-blooming-rah is all I can say! When I set anyones Outlook up I always manually move it to a folder called PST or Outlook then I could find it easier for backup purposes but glad to see MS have done that at last

[glennda]

I have been using this aswell thinking its quite good - one this that is annoying is that you cannot turn off the conversational linking for all folders you have to do it on each individually ( as far as i can see and after what google said). and also if it was clever enough not to group all emails with no subject together as we all know what teachers are like!

[bossman]

@john:

 

Too little too late, Zimbra has it beaten all ends up!

[Michael]

It is sensible I agree, but you can just move the PST with Outlook 2003 for example, then point it to the new location. Is the max PST size going to get any bigger?

[john]

It is sensible I agree, but you can just move the PST with Outlook 2003 for example, then point it to the new location. Is the max PST size going to get any bigger?

Didn't think it had one, I've had (but did slim it down the other day) a 10GB PST and it was fine.

 

@ Bossman - A you were going to go and watch TV and B - I don't actually use any PSTs for Exchange

[Michael]

Looks like it's 20GB for Outlook 2003 and 2007. It was 2GB for Outlook 2002.

[ajbritton]

Interesting.

 

PST files are famously not supported on non-local drives (Personal folder files are unsupported over a LAN or over a WAN link). I'm wondering what will happen with Outlook 2010 when My Docs is redirected to a network location. Will it still create PST files there?

 

Another ref

Ask the Performance Team : Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

[mattx]

I'm running the Office 2010 Beta and have just noticed where Outlook now places the Outlook data file, No longer is it buried deep within the user profile, but in My Documents\Outlook files.

Very convienient and easy to manage, so they will be removing this feature before going gold then

 

Don't get me started on .PST files......you won't hear the end of it.

[PiqueABoo]

PST files are famously not supported on non-local drives

 

Uh huh .. and AFAICT they can do some incredible magic shrinking tricks when they run up against quotas.

 

The difficulty for me: Even when you assume there's an Exchange, you still really need the archiving to a PST bit to get around lots of people's inability to spring clean their mailboxes.

[Michael]

PST files are famously not supported on non-local drives

 

I have done it, pointing to H:\ for example which is mapped and the PST files were about 120MB and it worked with no slowdown. Any more than a few users and you'd be better off setting up Exchange anyway!

[Ric_]

You're all missing the most important thing about 2010... you can make it black!

[webman]

You're all missing the most important thing about 2010... you can make it black!

 

Oh wow. I'm sold!

 

PSTs - PITAs as far as I'm concerned.

[ajbritton]

I have done it, pointing to H:\

 

MS do not say it cannot be done. Indeed, it's trivial. Point is, until now, it's not been officially supported. But if MS are going to drop the PST into a sub dir of My Docs, then won't this automatically go to the net on redirected My Docs? Time will tell no doubt.

[Michael]

You're all missing the most important thing about 2010... you can make it black!

 

Microsoft really are delivering with their features, or are they? I hope you can't make it all black otherwise that would be silly

 

then won't this automatically go to the net on redirected My Docs?

 

Yes in theory. I can't see how else it would work.

[PiqueABoo]

won't this automatically go to the net on redirected My Docs?

 

..which might be (by default) offline cached, but IIRC PSTs are excluded from that default caching(?)

 

This sounds like fun.

[Arthur]

Even when you assume there's an Exchange, you still really need the archiving to a PST bit to get around lots of people's inability to spring clean their mailboxes.

What about Archive Mailboxes in Exchange 2010?

[john]

You're all missing the most important thing about 2010... you can make it black!

Wonder if MS had been having a Rolling Stones moment and been looking at Red Doors and wanting to paint them black for a colour change and went BING idea lets paint Outlook black!!!

[Kim_Office_Team]

@Dos Box -- Glad you're enjoying some of the new Outlook features. I'm sure the Outlook folks would love to hear your feedback. You can all share your thoughts at the Outlook page on Facebook.

 

Join them by searching "Microsoft Outlook" at Facebook. It's a great way to help improve Outlook prior to its official release later this year!

 

Thanks!

Kim

Microsoft Office Outreach

[localzuk]

Overall, I think the new Outlook version is a huge improvement over older versions.

 

Simple things such as conversation threads, being able to quickly and easily create single click action buttons, having a easy to see mailbox quota status display etc... All will make admin a lot easier.

 

My only hope is that its reliability increases a little. It regularly crashes for me at the moment.

[srochford]

I have done it, pointing to H:\ for example which is mapped and the PST files were about 120MB and it worked with no slowdown. Any more than a few users and you'd be better off setting up Exchange anyway!

 

You can run across the M6 with traffic flowing but I wouldn't recommend it :-)

 

it's one of the many things which you can do on a small network but which will bring a bigger one grinding to a miserable halt - believe me, I've seen it :-(

 

It's possible that MS have completely rewritten the PST code (the problem was something to with the way Outlook wrote to PST files so it's possible to fix it but the problem's been around a long time so I would have thought they would have fixed it before now if it was trivial)

 

I'll have to stick Outlook 2010 on a machine with redirected my docs and see what it does - I do hope they've got clever code which recognises "network my docs" and puts the PST somewhere local.

[EduTech]

Yeah one thing that i find extremely annoying at the moment is the fact that everytime i go to create a "rule" it crashes!! x64 Version

 

I am sure that will be fixed upon release

 

James.

[PiqueABoo]

What about Archive Mailboxes in Exchange 2010?

 

Didn't know that existed.. 2010 is still on the to-do list i.e. when everyone else has finished finding the initial bugs.

 

But, the problem is I really want the people who can't manage their mailboxes to get their mountains of old crap out of Exchange - the idea of it being a second mailbox, especially another one that they'll also end up searching (which always used to be and probably still is just a bit of a performance hit) isn't that appealing. MS might want you to keep adding extra Exchange boxes to handle this, but budgets can have other ideas.

[Arthur]

The first service pack for Exchange 2010 should enable you to split off the archive mailboxes into a separate DAG so you could use cheaper/larger SATA disks specifically for less frequently accessed e-mail.

 

You're right about staff needing to clear out their inboxes. They are terrible at doing that at my school. Some of them want to keep every e-mail they have ever been sent. 1GB+ PSTs are an absolute pain to deal with (especially over wireless networks).