sharing outlook on a home network
December 27, 2005 4:43 PM   Subscribe

Sharing Outlook on a home network without using Exchange?

I want to open my laptop and see the same accounts & email archives I see on my desktop. I thought about sharing the outlook files under My Docs/Local Settings but Network Magic (my network "dashboard" app) won't share out system files, of which it considers these one. What's the best way to accomplish this? Both PCs using XP and Outlook 2000. I am a networking idiot.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)
 
So... how are you getting your e-mail? POP? IMAP? Exchange?

All you need to do is (in Outlook) go to Tools, Accounts, and look at the account settings and match them EXACTLY as they are on your Desktop. It should work just fine.

Be careful though -- if you want to see them on both computers all the time, ensure that your email isn't permanently downloading into Outlook. Rather make sure that it is staying on the server and deleted after X number of days (with X being enough time for you to get it downloaded on both if you need it on both.)

Hope this helps!
posted by k8t at 4:45 PM on December 27, 2005


There are several possible options here...
posted by jkaczor at 5:19 PM on December 27, 2005


The strategy I use is to place my .pst file in a windows briefcase folder for synchronization between the two systems. You have to enter the parameters for each account separately on each system and you will need to synchronize from the most recently used system before switching to the other. An advantage to this system is that you have a backup in place on the other system if one fails. A disadvantage is that, if you synchronize the wrong way you can overwrite the most recent copy with the one from the less recently updated system.
posted by Manjusri at 7:19 PM on December 27, 2005


If your email provider supports IMAP access then you can access your email using IMAP instead of POP. IMAP allows you to keep your email folders on the mail server rather than on your local computer, so no matter which computer you access your email from you see the same mail folders and messages. What's also nice about IMAP is if your local computer dies you don't need to worry about losing your email files because there on the mail server... just make sure the mail server is being backed up.
posted by StarForce5 at 7:21 PM on December 27, 2005


If you're using IMAP, be warned that Outlook DOES NOT store Sent items in the IMAP folders, unless you employ a bunch of tricky Rules.

Just something that you should be aware of. :-)

And if you're just getting email, I'm tempted to encourage you to use anything *but* Outlook... :-(
posted by drstein at 8:11 PM on December 27, 2005


Response by poster: No, I've had outlook forever on the desktop, I just got a laptop that I want to keep synched to the extent possible. The briefcases thing is way more manual than I want. I've been tempted to go IMAP in the past, but I tend to keep huge mail archives and I've never had an ISP that could handle it affordably. Thanks all for the thoughts.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:42 PM on December 27, 2005


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