In a recent encounter at a client I discovered that it might be handy for Exchange Administrative and Support staff to be configured such that their Outlook settings do not access or download the OAB. This means that they will always be looking directly at the GAL for their addresses, and will be sure to have an updated view of what is there, not contingent on the System Attendent to create an OAB on it’s schedule.
The load on Domain controllers does go up, as these persons are making direct LDAP lookups for every address, but for the limited scope I think it is benefitial.
Microsoft Outlook 2003 is the platform I’ve configured for this. There are a few ways that Outlook downloads the OAB and it is also dependent on if you are running Outlook in Cached mode or not.
If you are not in Cached Mode, you can simply go into the send/receive group for your exchange server and uncheck the box to download the Address Book when you send receive the group.
You may also want to get rid of the Send/Recieve menu item for downloading the Address Book. The registry key to do this is HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOffice11.0OutlookDisabledCmdBarItemsList and it is a string type key named TCID1 with a value set to 5658.
If you are running Outlook in cached mode it becomes slightly more complicated.
You have to create a few new registry keys as well as the work already done.
within the registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftExchangeExchange Provider create dword entries named:
Limit SRS Incremental Download
Limit Manual OAB Download
Limit SRS Full OAB Download
Allow SRS Full OAB Download
and set them all to dword:00000000.
Microsoft details these changes, as well as gives you some nice information about the OAB files and what they contain at the references below.
They also provide an as-is vbs script to make all the necessary registry changes.
References:
Hope this helps and helps your Service Desk staff in their quest to assist users.
