The information store could not be

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neil McCauley
  • Start date Start date
N

Neil McCauley

Windows XP & Outlook 2002

Worked fine until I installed remote computing software
that uses Outlook to get my work email into Outlook using
Microsoft Exchange Server. Now, when I try to
SEND/RECEIVE (when not connected to my corporate
network), I get "The information store could not be
opened."

Can someone please tell me exactly what I need to do to
get access to my non-work email accounts now?!

Thanks

- Neil
 
Neil McCauley said:
Windows XP & Outlook 2002

Worked fine until I installed remote computing software
that uses Outlook to get my work email into Outlook using
Microsoft Exchange Server. Now, when I try to
SEND/RECEIVE (when not connected to my corporate
network), I get "The information store could not be
opened."

Can someone please tell me exactly what I need to do to
get access to my non-work email accounts now?!

Thanks

- Neil
Click to expand...

Probably because when you are offline (or otherwise not connected to
your employer's network, sometimes using VPN), you cannot get to their
Exchange server. You probably now have an e-mail account that is
defined to connect to an Exchange server, and it is telling you that you
cannot connect to that Exchange server.

One solution is to NOT include your Exchange-based e-mail account in
Outlook in a send/receive mail poll. Tools -> Send/Receive Settings ->
Define Send/Receive Groups -> select whichever group contains your
Exchange e-mail account -> Edit -> select the Exchange-based e-mail
account -> Clear the "Include account ..." option. Now this e-mail
account will not get included in the scheduled or manual Send/Receive
mail polls (that include all *enabled* accounts), but you will get
e-mails for all the other accounts that were left included in general
mail polls. You will have to use Tools -> Send/Receive and select the
Exchange-based e-mail account when you are actually connected to your
employer.

If, however, you do much more e-mailing through work than you do through
your personal e-mail accounts, you could reverse this and include only
the Exchange-based e-mail account in mail polls and not include the
others. Then Send/Receive would do a mail poll only for your
Exchange-based e-mail account (provided you are connected to your
employer's network) and you would have to do manual mail polls for your
personal e-mail accounts. You choose which is/are your primary e-mail
account(s), include them in general mail polls, and not include those
that need manual polling under different a different communications
environment.
 
First of all, thanks for your help. I figured out the
problem, but the solution shows what I think is a flaw in
Outlook.

The problem was that I wanted my work email to reside on
my corporate LAN email server, not my personal PC. SO, I
changed the the "location" to which new email is
delivered to be the corporate LAN.

That worked fine for when I was connected to that LAN
through the VPN. However, when not connected,
that "information store" was not available, so there was
no way to deliver new email there.

The flaw is that I want my personal POP3 email delivered
to my personal email folder (outlook.pst) and my
Microsoft Exchange Server business email to reside on the
corporate LAN.

I solved the problem by resetting the delivery location
to my personal .PST folder. Too bad I can't have it both
ways.

Or can I? Any thoughts? And... thanks again.

- Neil

-----Original Message-----
So what *is* this vaguely mentioned "remote computing software"? VNC?
Outlook Web Access? PC Anywhere? What? Almost impossible to provide
help on unidentified software.

Do you use a VPN (virtual private network) connection to work (which you
should NOT be using for your personal accounts not on your employer's
network)?

From what I've gathered from searching for "information store" on
Outlook 2002 at http://support.microsoft.com, this term can apply to
your local .pst file or to your Exchange mailbox, so it is a vague
reference. So it appears your "information store" [mailbox] on the
Exchange server is okay and you can open it, but your "information
store" [.pst file] cannot be opened for you personal POP/SMTP e-mail
accounts.

Right-click on the root folder in the tree view (usually marked "Outlook
Today"), click Properties, click Advanced, and see where is your .pst
file. Or, alternatively, use the File -> Data File Management menu. In
Explorer, check the properties of that file, like making sure it is NOT
read-only. Also check its permission to make sure that you are granted
permission to read *and* write to that .pst file. Check that you have
permissions when logged on locally under your username and when you are
logged on under your company's domain. That is, login using your local
username (or Administrator) and make sure your local security allows you
permission to read and write this .pst file. Then connect to your
company, maybe through a VPN or whatever is this "remote computing
software", and login under their domain using whatever is your username
and password there, and then check your permissions under that domain
give your read and write access to your local .pst file. Your local
login and your domain logins, even if they use the same username, are
NOT the same login; username "johndoe" for a local login is not the same
user as username "johndoe" under your "mycompany" domain login (i.e.,
"johndoe" is not the same as "johndoe/domain").


.
Click to expand...
 
Neil McCauley said:
First of all, thanks for your help. I figured out the
problem, but the solution shows what I think is a flaw in
Outlook.

The problem was that I wanted my work email to reside on
my corporate LAN email server, not my personal PC. SO, I
changed the the "location" to which new email is
delivered to be the corporate LAN.

That worked fine for when I was connected to that LAN
through the VPN. However, when not connected,
that "information store" was not available, so there was
no way to deliver new email there.

The flaw is that I want my personal POP3 email delivered
to my personal email folder (outlook.pst) and my
Microsoft Exchange Server business email to reside on the
corporate LAN.

I solved the problem by resetting the delivery location
to my personal .PST folder. Too bad I can't have it both
ways.

Or can I? Any thoughts? And... thanks again.

- Neil
Click to expand...

I don't think so. One of my wishes for Outlook was to be able to select
which profile was the active one based on which connection was currently
active. If I was connected using the connectoid defined for my
company's VPN, I wanted to use one profile. If I was connected to my
ISP, I wanted to use a different profile. Not doable. In your case,
you want e-mail delivered to a different "information store" depending
on which connection you were using: one for when you use the VPN
connectoid and a different one when connected otherwise.

Unfortunately, Outlook will only let you select to which .pst file
(information store) ALL of your incoming e-mails get delivered to.
Tools -> Email Accounts, select an information store (i.e., which .pst
file) in the "Deliver new e-mail to the following location". You don't
get to assign any conditions on that selected information store. You
only get to pick one information store (.pst file) to which all your
incomings e-mails get delivered. This sucks.

HTTP e-mail accounts, like for Hotmail, actually get their own separate
..pst file and incoming e-mails go that information store instead of to
your default one (used and shared by all POP e-mail accounts in
Outlook). So Microsoft does know how to use separate information stores
and deliver e-mails to them separately. They just haven't provided an
option to do the same for POP e-mail accounts. If instead of an HTTP
e-mail account for Hotmail, I used Hotmail Popper to give me POP access
to Hotmail, then that "Hotmail" POP e-mail account would also have its
e-mails show up with all the other POP e-mail accounts in the one Inbox.
You can have multiple .pst files open in Outlook (which I do so I can
see and search through my auto-archive .pst file) but only one of them
gets used for all POP e-mail accounts, the one you select in the
"Deliver new e-mail to the following location". I'd like to have one
information store for my Hotmail accounts (when and if Microsoft ever
decides to support more than one) and have all Hotmail e-mails delivered
there (which is what they do now). I'd like to have a separate
information store for all my Yahoo accounts (which I access using POP
through YahooPOPs) and have all those e-mails delivered to the Inbox in
that information store. I'd like to have a separate information store
for all my e-mail accounts with my ISP and have all those e-mails
delivered to the Inbox in that information store. Then I wouldn't
bother with the stupidity of using color coding based on e-mail account
to demark within my Inbox from which account an e-mail originated.
Instead they would be separated into their own individual information
stores.

But, alas, tis all jus wishful thinking. I don't bother with beta
software (in my personal life) and we have no time nor need to evaluate
Outlook 2003 at work, so I don't know if they fix this deficiency in
their latest version.
 
Back
Top