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Sharepoint PSTs

Created: 12 Nov 2009 | 5 comments
Rob Wilcox's picture
+2 2 Votes
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 Many EV customers are doing PST migrations, and this is something that you should be aware of, I think.

EV will scan machines for anything with a PST extension.   It doesn't really know at this point whether a file that it finds is truly a PST or not.  There are two issues here :-

* EV finds a file that has a PST extension, and it's not a PST..  opening it with MAPI will then cause all sorts of issues!

* EV finds a file that is in fact a PST.... but it's a Sharepoint PST.

With Sharepoint 2007 you can synch document libraries to a "client", ie Outlook.  When you do that a PST is created on the client machine which contains hooks back up to the Sharepoint document library and things are kept in synch by Outlook.  It's really good, and it's really bad.. for PST migrations.

The first issue above has been fixed in Enterprise Vault already (8 SP 2)

The second issue is to be fixed shortly.  After working with Microsoft, we managed to get information from them about how to tell if the PST that is really a PST is a Sharepoint PST or not ... See this link. http://blogs.msdn.com/stephen_griffin/archive/2009/09/28/detecting-sharepoint-psts.aspx

Now I'm sure there are other anomalies like this, if you've seen one...  let's hear about it.

Comments

Mnereng's picture
12
Nov
2009
0 Votes 0
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PSTDisableGrow does not prevent Sharepoint PSTs

Its only vaguely related to your post, but its worth noting...if you implement PSTDisableGrow (to stop additional PST growth), it does not prevent the continued growth and use of Sharepoint PSTs.  That was an important discovery for us.  The Sharepoint team would have been very disappointed if we were to take away some of thier functionality in an effort to stop the spread of unmanaged email data.

We are doing PST importing manually, so the issue of accidentally archiving Sharepoint PSTs is a non issue for us.

Rob Wilcox's picture
12
Nov
2009
2 Votes +2
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Excellent.....

Thanks for the comment Mnereng, it's an important point.

 

Thanks
Rob Wilcox
Enterprise Vault Engineering
Certification Team
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/rob-wilcox
diver7's picture
04
Feb
2010
0 Votes 0
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What about Internet Calendar Subscriptions?

If you subscribe to any internet calendars in Outlook it also creates a PST file to track this. What does EV do with these?

Rob Wilcox's picture
22
Feb
2010
1 Vote +1
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 Diver7 -- how do you do

 Diver7 -- how do you do that?  Can you give the exact steps please?

 

Thanks
Rob Wilcox
Enterprise Vault Engineering
Certification Team
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/rob-wilcox
diver7's picture
23
Feb
2010
0 Votes 0
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Instructions for creating an Internet Calendar Subscriptions PST

These instructions are assuming Outlook 2007 running on Windows 7

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Go to Tools|Account Settings
  3. Click on the Internet Calendars tab
  4. Click the New button on the toolbar
  5. Open a browser window and navigate to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/holidays.html
  6. Pick any of the holiday calendar links and copy the hyperlink
  7. Paste that link into the location field on the "New Internet Calendar Subscription" dialog in Outlook.
  8. Click Add
  9. That holiday calendar will not showup in Outlook.
  10. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook
  11. In this folder you will see a file called "Internet Calendar Subscriptions.pst"

-Mike