Duplicate Outlook to 2nd PC

[goombawaho]

I have a woman that has stand alone Outlook 2007 running fine on her desktop, but she wants to be able to copy all the data to her laptop when she goes on a trip. So, the duplication is going to be a rare event but I was wondering the best way to do it. I had tried a scheduled batch file to copy over her network to the laptop, but it fails to delete a few files that are being held open even AFTER Outlook has been closed.

So, rather than telling her to Export and then Import, which can seem complicated and is not really necessarry, I just told her to open the Outlook data folder on the laptop and delete everything and then copy the contents of the Outlook data folder from the desktop.

Open Outlook on the laptop and there's your up-to-date Outlook. Any better ideas that are free?

 

[smah]

Assuming that both systems are connected with some network with some share, you could:

Create a batch file in the desktop's startup folder that copies the .pst file to some network share (robocopy is best, but xcopy will work)

Create a batch file in the laptop's startup folder that copies the network copy to the laptop.

Then just make sure the laptop is connected to the network & started up once before each trip.

 

[goombawaho]

I tried that. If Outlook had been opened since the laptop booted up it seemed to hold one file open (so that it couldn't be overwritten) even though Outlook was fully closed.

 

[smah]

That's why I said to only do the copying but putting the batch file in the startup folder. It would only occur at logon, when outlook couldn't possibly be open.

 

[goombawaho]

Ok - I'll give it a shot if she has issues with making a CD and transferring it that way. The nice part about the CD is that she wants a backup of the data for her records anyway, so it takes care of two things at once making a CD.

 

[donb01]

Sometimes when you think outlook is closed you can still find the OUTLOOK.EXE process in the task manager. Just end task on it. No (easy) way to automate that, but it's there.

I get irritated sometimes because I have my work computer set up to receive my personal mail but leave it on the server for when I get home, and it seems as if that important E-mail I've been waiting for all day never arrives - then I return home to find out outlook has been happily checking my mail all day long.

So now every time I end it I make sure the little outlook indicator is gone from the system tray, and there is no process still running for it.