Profile Management

Profile Management and Outlook

September 5, 2023

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This article describes best practices for integrating Microsoft Outlook with roaming profiles.

It is a good practice to ensure that users store Outlook data on a server rather than on a network share or locally.

With roaming profiles, files and folders in the location defined by the environment variable %UserProfile% (on the local computer) roam with users, except for one folder, %UserProfile%\Local Settings. This exception affects Outlook users because a Microsoft recommendation means that, by default, some Outlook data (for example, .ost, .pst, and .pab files) is created in this non-roaming folder.

Important: Files in this location are typically large and hinder the performance of roaming profiles.

The following practices can reduce troubleshooting of roaming profiles with Outlook and encourage good email management by users and administrators:

If possible, use an ADM template for Microsoft Office that prohibits the use of .pst files.
If users need more space, increase storage on your Microsoft Exchange servers rather than a network share.
Define and enforce an email retention policy for the entire company (one that involves a company-wide email storage server) rather than granting exceptions for .pst files to individual users or increasing their personal storage capacity. The policy must also discourage reliance on .pst files by allowing users easily to request email restores to their inbox.
If .pst files cannot be prohibited, do not configure Profile Management or roaming profiles. The Enable search index roaming for Outlook feature is not designed for .pst files.

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Profile Management and Outlook

September 5, 2023

Contributed by:

September 5, 2023

Contributed by:

Profile Management and Outlook

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