Outlook in cached mode

[maya14]

Is it best to enabled cached mode on Outlook for all users or only for users with notebooks. MS recommends that cache mode be enable for best results.

 

[ShackDaddy]

In my experience, this ends up being a question of disk-space versus performance. Having caching turned on means less traffic on the network, and access to Outlook data if there are connectivity problems or issues with the server.

Having it turned on also means that a chunk of disk space is used for the .ost file, which for some users can actually be very large if their mailbox on the server is large. If disk space isn't an issue, then I like to keep cached mode enabled.

If you are using roaming profiles, do not use cached mode!

For most situations, cached mode is the preferred configuration.

It can actually help recover data in the event of an Exchange Server crash, but I won't go into that very deeply. Suffice it to say that a user can copy stuff into a .pst while not connected to Exchange, "preserving" that data so that even if the server lost it all, the user would still have it preserved in the .ost.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting