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Multiple people accessing 1 PST file

We have an email account setup that clients send requests to.  Currently it is being popped on one computer only and that machine is logged on 24/7.  The time has come to retire that machine and it won't be replaced.  Instead we plan on having 3 or 4 people being able to pop that mail account.   What I would like though is to continue using that PST file.

Does anyone know how to setup outlook so that I continue to use my PST file for my mail, and use the other PST file for that client specific mail, and view them both within outlook?

Here's the requirements.

Bob has a PST file
Mary has a PST file
Joe has a PST file.
Client has a PST file.

Bob opens his outlook, sees everything from his PST and from Client PST.

Mary opens her outlook, sees everything from her PST and Client PST.

Joe opens his outlook, sees everthing from his PST and Client PST.


I am hoping that it can work this way as well.  There is 1 unread email in the Client PST.  After Mary Reads it, it shows there are no unread emails on Bob's and Joes screens as well.
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slink9

Why not allow each person to check the email account but only one removes the messages from the server?
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because today Bob may be working on that clients requests...but from 11:00 to 2:30 Mary may be.
Tomorrow and Wednesday Joe could be doing it. and we need a central repository of all of the emails sent to us from that client to go back to as a history.


Currently we are using an older version of Eudora to do this.  It works well with one exception...it truncates all attachments to a DOS naming standard of 8 characters.
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slink9

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PST files can't be shared like you are describing.  (Outlook opens the file for read, write, and exclusive access.)


Not sure what email system you are using, but if IMAP is your backend -- you could try getting each person to read the same IMAP inbox.  (Suggestion is a wild guess.)
You could do a couple of things to get the desired affect you are looking for.

First set up Bob, Mary, and Joe to POP the account. each time one of them POPs the account, it will remove the clients request from the server. To get each of the other 2 users to see the e-mail message that the first user took off the server, create a rule on all 3 users computer that says when a message comes in from the specified account, forward it to people or distribution list. Bob's rule will be set up to forward messages to Mary and Joe. Mary will be setup to forward to Bob and Joe, and so on. Then create another rule on each computer to receive each of these forwarded messages to a specific folder that you create under the inbox called "Client Requests".

This way each user will have requests coming in only once to there inbox (if they were the first to POP it), and still get a copy of all other requests sent to the "Client Requests" folder just below it if they aren't the one who gets it first.

I hope this gives you the desired result, if not let me know what it does and doesn't do for you

Jeff-
jeepxo, are you there?
Does the proposed answer solve this one for you?  If not, reject it.
jml, please read the answers versus comments section at the bottom of the question.  Although this is original to this question, it is far from being the ONLY working solution.
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sorry guys...had some family matters to attend to and was away.

Mary, Joe, Bob were simply used as examples.  The idea is that anyone would be able to access the pst file if they needed.  No single employee is assigned to this task.  The client has an email address that they send the information to.  Interns, secretaries, high school students all may work on the request on any given day.  If the client calls with a problem whomever answers the phone needs to be able to access this information without having to switch computers.  Based on your suggestion jml6278 I would have to have all of the emails forwarded to all of the employees in the company.

Like I said in my first post, I was able to acheive this with an older version of Eudora.  every computer could have Eudora installed on it and access the emails simultaneously...the problem was the limitation of DOS names for attachments.
Like I said, check out NetFolders.
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Sorry it took so long for me to do this.  Got tied up with some other things so this became a background thing.

It's not 100% the way I would like it but I think this is the best solution we can come up with in Outlook.