Many users are asking when Microsoft will be releasing a Notes connector Outlook 2007 but Microsoft has no plans to produce an Outlook 2007 connector. Users are reporting some success using IBM's connector (v. 7.0.1) with Outlook 2007.

The following steps work for many users who tried them:

If you have Outlook 2003 and want to do a 2-step installation:

1. Install Outlook 2003
2. Install the latest Service Pack for Office 2003
3. Install Domino Connector for 2003 (should be on the Notes server or available from your Administrator)
4. Upgrade Office to 2007
5. Add a System Path to: C:\Program Files\DominoForOutlook

The following method gives you a clean install of Outlook 2007, however, if you prefer not to edit the registry (or can't), you'll need to use the two-step method. This method was used on Vista but it should work on Windows XP as well.

1. Install Office 2007.
2. Add %ProgramFiles%\DominoForOutlook to the path.
3. Install Domino Connector for 2003 (should be on the Notes server or available from your Administrator)
4. Configure the new account in Control Panel, Mail.
5. At Start menu, Run, enter regedit.
6. Browse to HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\inotesoutlookaddin.addin. (Look in Hkey_Local_Machine if you did a For All Users installation)
7. Change LoadBehavior from 3 to 2 (this disables the iNotes add-in)

Note that the Replication back to Lotus Domino doesn't seem to work for some people. There may be other issues, including Outlook crashing on exit. This is more of an annoyance than damaging and may be fixed by disabling the iNotes add-in.

To get to your PATH environment variable go to your System Properties (right click on My Computer, Properties). Next select the Advanced tab and click on Environment Variables tab. In the System Variables list, find Path and click edit. Add %ProgramFiles%\DominoForOutlook to the end and click OK.

Since the very first versions of Exchange and Outlook, Microsoft has said keeping PSTs on a network drive was not supported and has the potential to corrupt the PST, possibly damaging it beyond repair. That hasn't stopped people from doing it though.

For years, Outlook and Exchange Server experts have been vocal about not using PSTs with Exchange mailboxes or accessing them over a network. A recent post on the Windows Server performance team's blog points out why it's bad from a server performance point of view.

It begins:
"At least once a week, someone on the Performance team will get a customer call concerning hangs or resource depletion on their file server. The file server in question is used for user home folder storage and users are accessing Outlook Personal Storage (.pst) files stored on the server from their client.”

“Sometimes the server will hang for a few minutes and then continue operating for a few minutes - and then hang again. Rinse & repeat. The users are frustrated because of slow access to their data, the server administrators are frustrated because they are tasked with fixing the problem, and upper management is frustrated because everyone else is frustrated."Obviously, if this is happening because the Exchange mailbox is too small, lot of frustration would be eliminated if the upper management would sign off on larger mailboxes. If the site does not use Exchange, they need to rethink their use of network shares for storing PSTs. Not only does storing a PST on a network share lead to increased network traffic and related performance issues as Outlook reads and writes to the PST file, there is the potential for corruption and data loss if (when) the network connection is lost while Outlook has a PST open.

Bandwidth and Outlook performance issues aside, why does it cause performance problems on the server? The performance team uses this example:
"Let's say that a user sends an e-mail message to 500 users within the company. All of these users have their e-mail delivered directly to their PST file which is stored on the File Server. Some of these 500 users may need to extend their PST files to receive it. To extend a PST, an extra allocation on disk has to be made via NTFS. This locks out the whole volume while free space is allocated and the Master File Table (MFT) is updated. While this is happening for each user, all I/O for the other 499 users is on hold." For the complete story, read the complete article by the Windows Server performance team:
Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!
http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/01/21/network-stored-pst-files-don-t-do-it.aspx

Personal folder files are unsupported over a LAN or over a WAN link
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019/en-us

Often times Exchange server sites encourage or require users to move messages from their Exchange mailbox to a PST to conserve disk space on the server and speedup the Exchange server backup process. Unfortunately, having users move messages to PSTs to reduce mailbox size moves the storage headaches from the Exchange server to the desktop or file server; it does not solve it. It also does not solve the backup woes. Since servers are frequently backed up and many desktops are not, local PST files may be lost if the computer crashes. Keeping PSTs on a network drive (even though it's not supported) appears to solve the backup problems, however Outlook keeps the PST open on the server, which may affect the server backup program.

Using a PST means an increase in file sizes due to loss of single instance storage. A single 3 MG file sent to 5 mailboxes uses 3 MG of disk space on the server or 3 MG on each of the 5 desktops. In addition, the storage efficiency of PST files is lower - messages may be twice as large due to the MAPI properties stored on messages kept in PSTs.

From the user's standpoint, they lose remote access to the messages in the PST because messages stored in PSTs are not accessible by OWA or from other computers. Also affected is the ability of users to share their folders with other users. They need access to the network server to use the PST; if the network goes down, they lose access to their email. If Outlook was writing to the PST when the network went down data loss may occur.

On the surface, roaming profiles seem like the perfect solution but the default location for PST is not included in roaming profiles. Moving PSTs to folders included in roaming profiles can greatly increase the time it takes to sync the profile and increased network traffic.

The solution? Larger Exchange mailboxes. Yes, users are pack rats and will use all the space allotted to them, but disk space is cheap and there are better ways to manage mailboxes. Start with good anti-spam filters to remove as much of the chaff from the mail stream as possible. Encourage users to use SharePoint or file shares and send links to files in the email, not files. Use Exchange server's Mailbox Manager to keep the size of the Deleted Items and Junk Email folders low or to remove items over a certain age or size.

Editors note: Internet mail accounts have to use a PST for their message store and as long as the PST is stored locally there shouldn't be problems.

If you are an Outlook developer looking for an idea that people just might buy, I get a surprising number of requests for the ability to display the contact's age in the subject field. (I'm told Microsoft gets a lot of requests for it too.)

Users would like to see a utility for Outlook's Calendar where the program calculates the age of the event. For example, if a contact's birth date is 04/06/1965, then on 04/06/2007, the calendar will show it that it's their 42nd birthday. Calendar Creator has this feature, and has had it for several years (since DOS) and users who migrated from Calendar Creator would like to see Outlook have this feature as well.

While it is possible (and quite easy) to add a date field to a contact or appointment form to calculate a person’s age, it doesn't add the age to the subject field for display in the typical calendar views.
Adding a Person's Age to a Contact
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/age_form.htm