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Copying mail profiles to another PC

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6 replies

by nettek

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Win9x PCs running Outlook 97 connecting to an Exchange 5.5 box for email. The situation is that we have a PC room with about 8 machines that are shared by about 16 users. Boss wants all 16 users to be able to access their email from any machine.

Normally, a seperate profile would be set up under Mail and Fax in Control Panel for each user, and then Outlook would be set to prompt for the profile to be used when Outlook is started.

Rather than have to create 16 profiles on each of 8 PCs, does anyone know of a way that the profiles can be created on one PC and then copied to the other 7 PCs? If so, would the fact that some are 95 and some are 98 machines make a difference?

750 points because you'll save my desktop support guy a lot of work.

6 replies

by syscokid

Here's the Microsoft way. Do this on one machine, then export the Outlook registry key from that machine and import it into the other machines.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q167/3/97.ASP

(Sometimes when I cut and pasteURL's it looks ok to me but once the answer is posted, an extraneous space will have crept in. Make sure you delete any extraneous spaces or the page won't load).

by nettek

I don't know if you thoroughly read Q167397, but it was very hard to follow. Even if it would work, it seemed like an awful lot of file moving and registry editing to accomplish it.

I actually found out how to do what I wanted myself. In Win9x, the *Mail and Fax* profiles are stored at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles
I simply created the appropriate profiles on one PC, exported the "Profiles" registry folder, and imported it to the other 9x machines. Worked like a charm.

Thanks for your response.

by curacao_dejavu

We need to know if there is one common userid to login (think so) or if everybody has their own userid. Are the users able to press cancel to login.?
And finally are you using roaming profiles ?
I would suggest to implement roaming profiles (so whenever they logg on they have the same profile) and implement a homedirectory for that (or those) users (on that networkdrive you would store the outlooksettings. By doing this you have to make sure that they always connect to the network (thus no pressing cancel at the logg in screen.
Different OS versions would not matter.
So then define outlook on 1 workstation , even yours) and it would be avaible through the whole network.

regards,

by curacao_dejavu

Here are some links to help you started.

MS KB Article ID: Q161070 Step by Step Roaming Profiles Configuration

MS KB Article ID: Q142682 How to Create and Copy Roaming User Profiles in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000

MS KB Article ID: Q137979 Creating Windows 9x Home Directories on Windows NT Server

MS KB Article ID: Q139449 How to Create Individual Home Directories

users profiles may not be mixed between win9x and nt and 2000
MS KB Article ID: Q269378 Differences in the User Profiles of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000

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