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Outlook 2007 installation puts .ost file in home folder on network drive instead of in the default location.

In recent weeks whenever I install Office 2007 on a computer it changes the default file location for the .ost file in Outlook. It should be in c:\local settings\application data\Microsoft\outlook. Instead it's putting the file in the H drive on our file server. We use the H drive for people to have their own folders on the network that get backed up. We usually create PST files in this folder but the ost files we want to stay on the local machine. This is happening automatically during the setup of Outlook 2007. Even if it's an upgrade from 2003 this seems to be happening although it just seems to be doing it when configuring the mail account on a laptop and using Cached exchange mode. This defeats the purpose of cached exchange mode since we want people with laptops to have a copy of their inbox on their computers in case they want to work on a plane or someplace else where there are no internet connections. I install Office 2007 from a network share with a setup file that enters the product key and other information in there automatically. I've checked that and there aren't any settings that would cause this. Can anyone help me out?

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boochkn

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dcicheese

ASKER

The H drive is the home folder in active directory but the setup script for Office 2007 doesn't have any references to %homedrive%. The default file locations for the PST and OST files in the setup script aren't configured so they should just go to the default location on the C drive. We don't have any GPOs that redirect anything to the H drive so that shouldn't be it. I did notice that a couple of people who've had this problem have subfolders in their H drive that shouldn't be there. There's a subfolfer in the %username%$ format that seems to have been created automatically. For example "John Smith" would have a subfolder in his H drive as jsmith$. Each users folder on the file server is shared in the jsmith$ format. Their Active Directory profile has the home folder as the H drive mapped to \\fileserver\jsmith$. It's almost like there's a setting created somewhere that automatically maps the H drive for them but then when you edit the home drive setting in Active Directory it's actually creating a new subfolder in one that's already been created somewhere else. I'm not sure if that makes sense but that's what I've got.

dcicheese

ASKER

Scratch the last part about the subfolder on the H drive in the jsmith$ format. Apparently that subfolder is created automatically by outlook because in Outlook the default offline folder file settings has h:\jsmith$\outlook.ost as the default and it doesn't matter if I'm using cached exchange mode or not. Basically the folder location of this file is \\fileserver\jsmith$\jsmith$\outlook.ost.
The home folder is just the \\fileserver\jsmith$ portion. I'm really confused now. I can't find a setting anywhere that would be causing this.

boochkn

Well, maybe the default isn't what you want...try overriding it by configuring the setup script to use %userprofile% (I am assuming you aren't using roaming profiles).

dcicheese

ASKER

Yeah, it's just weird that this would have been changed. It was working before and now it's not working. Really word. I'm not sure what the deal is. I'll try changing the default location in my Outlook setup script and we'll see what happens. If that works I'll come back and give you the points.

Thanks.

boochkn

BTW are you using a PRF file to configure outlook profiles upon first run of outlook?

dcicheese

ASKER

No, I just manually connect to the Exchange Server and set it up that way.

dcicheese

ASKER

Never really did figure this out. I just know when I'm setting up Outlook for somebody the first time to change the folder location of the .OSt file. Thanks for the help.