Can .pst file be located in Onedrive?

Anonymous
2014-03-22T13:11:31+00:00

I have read some other posts and I am thoroughly confused.  Here is my setup, and what I would like to do:

I have a subscription to Office 365.  My main email account is a Gmail account, and it´s a POP account.  I also use  Calendar, Notes, and Tasks on my Outlook 365 setup on my main desktop computer.  I also have a Laptop that I only use when I am on travel.  Therefore, I never use the Desktop and Laptop simultaneously; I use either one or the other.

Until now, each time I go on travel, I need to manually copy my C:\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook[emailaddress].pst file from my Desktop to my Laptop, and then copy it back to my Desktop after the end of my trip.  This is awkward and very inconvenient, to say the least.

Could I move the storage location of the .pst file to Onedrive, so that both Outlook 365 installations in both the Desktop and the Laptop are pointing to the same .pst file and I wouldn´t have to do all the manual copying anymore?

If I can do that, what steps would I have to do to to change the storage location of the .pst file so that I don´t mess up anything?

Alternatively, if storing the .pst file in Onedrive was not supported or recommended, is there a way to automatically keep two installations of Office365 as I described, in synch?

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T18:18:07+00:00

    I have a slightly different variation on this...  I have a machine that automatically installed the .pst file in my OneDrive folder. I'm not sure if I was set to use OneDrive as my default save location for new files when I installed Office 365 Home.  But I would not have thought that setting would affect where the .pst file goes.  This machine has Windows 10 Home, clean install (not upgraded). And Office 365 2016 was installed fresh.  All of my other machines had earlier office 365 versions and upgraded to 2016. They all have the .pst file in my documents on the PC.

    I like the concept of syncing among my several machines, but I understand that sharing .pst files in the cloud is not a safe way to do it.  I am also concerned about the data upload/download costs.

    Is there a way to move the .pst file and have outlook still find it? Maybe it automatically searches? Or do I have to delete the account and re-create it (hopefully pointing it to the moved .pst file)?

    Thanks for any and all help.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T18:57:09+00:00

    I am very sorry to say that I gave up.  So about one month ago I bough my first iMac, after literally decades of being a continuous Windows user, as it happens that my first PC was an IBM XT with a 10MB. hard drive in 1982!  I did the move with a lot of trepidation, since Apple was new territory for me.

    Now, all my contacts, Notes, Calendar and Reminders are always auto-magically in-synch with my other Apple devices, as are all my IMAP email accounts.  I did install Office 365 on my iMac, since I am still subscribed to it, but I am slowly finding out that I can do everything I need in Appledom, with a lot fewer problems and synch issues.

    I still have a Windows laptop, but from my experience so far, I think that its life will be limited, and I suspect that I will probably end up with all Apple within the next few months.

    A sad ending to a lot of frustration and time spent with .pst files, inconsistencies galore, unending forum conversations, and synch issues all over.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-12-11T20:02:34+00:00

    If the pst is located on OneDrive, with outlook closed copy/move the pst to a Documents location the usual default being \Documents\Outlook Files\ - do not overwrite any existing, when outlook starts it will complain and give you the option to browse to & select the pst you copied

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-12-14T18:59:44+00:00

    thanks for you suggestion.  I hoped it would work something like that.  Unfortunately, for me it didn't quite work out.  I moved the file, started outlook, browsed to the new file location and selected it, but outlook complained that it could not access the data file every time I did a send/receive. I deleted the account, and ended up with a data file for the .pst in the new location.  Strange.  So I removed the data file (backed up the .pst just in case, but the actual file was not deleted), and re-created the account, linking it to the existing .pst file.  that worked.  not sure if I could have linked to the .pst file had I not removed the data file in outlook first.

    thanks for your interest and assistance.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-01-11T15:23:08+00:00

    I was thinking the same... to try to upload a PST file to see if it can be sincronized.

    Anyway, I have another idea which is to locate the PST file-s in a Flash drive.

    So my question would be....

    If I format the Flash drive to NTFS and locate the PST files there, will it be secure

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