Moving outlook.pst from Local PC to Server

Hi to all,

Im looking to solve a wee problem at work...

We all have our own laptops and as were a small company we dont bother with logons etc. The server is set up for file sharing etc.

We run Outlook (mainly 2000 but there is a 2003 running) and receive mail from the server - this is all fine.

I have set the outlooks to archive daily to the server - each outlook person has a "<user>_archive.pst" file. We did have it set to weekly but a laptop hdd died and 5 days of emails were lost. Daily is better for us.

What i want is to beable to also have the current mailbox stored on the server aswell.

My idea behind having the outlook.pst or mailbox.pst file on the server is as follows:

We have 5 users each have there own laptops and so each person has a win xp login for that laptop.

I am going to create user accounts on all laptops for everybody.
From doing that, somebody can log onto any laptop in the office and get access to there outlook as the user account on that laptop will have outlook confugued with the settings necessary to allow people to recieve there emails, use address book, calender etc.

I dont have problems with software or user files as everyone uses (not necesserally has) the same software and all files are server based.

Does anybody know how do do this?

Many thanks for your help - hope Santa will be good to everybody this year!
Stuart.

 

My best suggestion (and one that will improve some other pieces) is for you to buy SBS Server and use the Exchange Server piece to handle your office mail users.

SBS 2003 is the latest and greatest but may seem a little pricy if you have more than the 5 users that the basic product supports and have to buy additional CALs.

SBS 2000 is still an excellent product and for a bit less money.

 

PST files

You can simply move the .pst file for each user to the server and direct Outlook to open that .pst file. The problem I see is that the user must be conected to the server at all times to use outlook. ie: he cant take it home and work on it. You would need to keep a local copy.