How to Create Offline Address Book Files on a Staging Computer

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Use this procedure to create offline address book files on a staging computer.

Before You Begin

Warning

Incorrectly editing the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Problems resulting from editing the registry incorrectly may not be able to be resolved. Before editing the registry, back up any valuable data.

Procedure

To create offline address book files on a staging computer

  1. Locate a staging computer to be used for downloading the offline address book files used in this deployment.

  2. Delete any pre-existing offline address book files that might be on the staging computer. By default, these files are located in the following folders: Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

  3. Create a new Outlook profile configured for Cached Exchange Mode on the staging computer.

    Note

    If you intend to use ANSI offline address books, create the PreferANSI registry value on the staging computer prior to creating the new Outlook profile.

  4. Start Outlook with this new profile, and wait until the offline address book files have been automatically downloaded from the Exchange Server computer. After a successful download, as indicated by Event 27 in the event log, exit Outlook.

  5. In Windows Explorer, browse to the following folder location: Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

  6. If you plan to use a CD-ROM to deploy the offline address book files to Outlook users, check the size of all offline address book (.oab) files in this folder to ensure that they will fit on the CD. CDs typically hold anywhere from 680 to 700 megabytes (MB) of data.

  7. Copy the following text into a text file and save it as IsDeployed.reg:
    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Exchange Provider]
    “IsDeployed”=dword:00000001

  8. Delete the IsDeployed key from the registry on the staging computer, and then close the registry editor.