Outlook 2010 how to prevent .ost files

Is there any downside to not allowing the ost file to be created?  The email will just be stored on the server, no? The only diff is that you wont be able to access your email offline, but not a big deal in my case as these computers are are used by 150 users, so its like a "community box", agree?

The easiest method since it's a single PC, create a .prf file using Office Customisation Tool and make it an online only, uncheck the setting to make available offline.  Then on the machine in question, just need to run Outlook /importprf {Path to Outlook.prf} you can do this via RunOnce registry.  Make sure you change the .PRF File so that it's the default profile and it will overwrite any existing profile.

While you could also do this via Group Policy, it doesn't really make any sense to create one for one system.

Cheers

OST files are used to cache the users inbox locally and cached mode is recommended by Microsoft. So rather than ask how to get rid of them, maybe we can figure out why they are so big? In a network environment, most users should be storing their data on a file server. That would leave lots of storage room on a modern PC. Perhaps you should look at policies for managing the mail storage better rather than making you whole system less efficient by disbaling its performance enhancements like cached mode.

Just something to think about. If you want to go the other way, the previous experts have given you some good advice already.

Maybe I've misread this post, but I think wayy2be is referring to a shared computer, we also have similar systems, mainly multimedia systems which are high spec systems that our staff use, for email we use the online email option as I referred to earlier, similar to our "Remote Desktop Servers(previously Terminal Servers)", alternatively staff members can use WebMail.  Also it should be pointed out that OST files are not supported on network drives, which is why they're stored in the Local Settings/AppLocal folder, so they don't roam with profiles.  On some of our older systems we also still use DelProf utility to remove profiles from shared systems not used more than 30 days, to help keep these shared systems free of old profiles.

Cheers

Thanks for the replies. Tbone - the problem only exists on these 4 machines since 150 employees use them in shift work. Other than that its not an issue for the rest of our users. I totally agree on your policy point but this is a different situation.

Matrixn - You are correct as these machines are shared. We have 4 not one, that is a mistake on my part sorry. What is the best way to accomplish this via GPO?

Thanks all for the great responses