T
Tom Edmondson
I've spent a couple of days experimenting with the following situation:
I work at a community college. All of our student PC's have "locked down"
configurations. This means that whatever is changed during a session is
eliminated when the PC is rebooted; it returns to the original configuration
in all regards.
One of our Office Technology courses uses Outlook 2007. Outlook was
installed with the default configuration. My goal is a completely portable
Outlook configuration that will allow students to connect a USB drive and
start Outlook with a configuration and data file from a USB drive.
I've tried using a .PRF file when starting Outlook and it configures the
email account flawlessly. My problem relates to the .PST file which I need
to access (or load) from the removable media.
When I include the USB path to the .PST file in the SERVICE section of the
..PRF file Outlook throws the error "The information service has not been
configured. Select an existing file to configure, or type the name of a new
file to create" in a window captioned "Personal Folders".
My second approach involves a batch file that copies the USB .PST file to
the default .PST file location on the hard drive and then starts Outlook.
The copy attempt throws a "file in use" error on the destination .PST file
and no copy takes place. This in spite of the fact that Outlook has never
been started in this session. If I close Outlook and immediately reopen it
the file is copied and Outlook opens with all the student's emails intact.
I need to get one of these methods to work or find another way to accomplish
the same thing. The second method above does have the disadvantage that the
students must remember to export the .PST file from the PC back to their USB
device at the end of each class.
Thanks for any help,
Tom
I work at a community college. All of our student PC's have "locked down"
configurations. This means that whatever is changed during a session is
eliminated when the PC is rebooted; it returns to the original configuration
in all regards.
One of our Office Technology courses uses Outlook 2007. Outlook was
installed with the default configuration. My goal is a completely portable
Outlook configuration that will allow students to connect a USB drive and
start Outlook with a configuration and data file from a USB drive.
I've tried using a .PRF file when starting Outlook and it configures the
email account flawlessly. My problem relates to the .PST file which I need
to access (or load) from the removable media.
When I include the USB path to the .PST file in the SERVICE section of the
..PRF file Outlook throws the error "The information service has not been
configured. Select an existing file to configure, or type the name of a new
file to create" in a window captioned "Personal Folders".
My second approach involves a batch file that copies the USB .PST file to
the default .PST file location on the hard drive and then starts Outlook.
The copy attempt throws a "file in use" error on the destination .PST file
and no copy takes place. This in spite of the fact that Outlook has never
been started in this session. If I close Outlook and immediately reopen it
the file is copied and Outlook opens with all the student's emails intact.
I need to get one of these methods to work or find another way to accomplish
the same thing. The second method above does have the disadvantage that the
students must remember to export the .PST file from the PC back to their USB
device at the end of each class.
Thanks for any help,
Tom