Folder Redirection Problems?

[thebrad]

Hi all,

I work at a school, we are running a Server 08 DC here. I'm planning to deploy Office 07 here, but when logged on as a student, I'm having some problems saving. It wont save. How I have downloaded the Office 07 adm's and they work great, but not for Publisher :/ and from what I've read a default file save path can't be set for Publisher. So to fix this, I have do this........

Taking off the normal My Documents folder redirection, and redirected it to H:\ (which is the users home drive). How this fixes Office and users can still access there H: drive, but the My Documents redirect no longer works. How can I make this work again, with breaking Office?

Has anyone come across this problem, or know how to fix it? Or can suggest a better way?

Thanks,

Brad.

[sc302 Veteran]

use unc paths in folder redirection not drive letters, this has always been my practice and has always worked.

\\servername\%username% should work if the individual folders are shared out (which they should be for ease of mapping), if you have issues check your app logs and system logs on the individual systems having issues they will help trying to solve issues like this.

[p858snake]

  sc302 said:

\\servername\%username% should work if the individual folders are shared out (which they should be for ease of mapping), if you have issues check your app logs and system logs on the individual systems having issues they will help trying to solve issues like this.

...No, that is a disjusting way to share, and that will easily create hundreds of shares you have to manage espically in a school enviroment, you should only be sharing one folder and then having the user folders under that.

You should be using something like:

-Root Home Folder Dir (Shared (Preferably Hidden))
|-- User One
|-- User Two

and then your share path is simply \\servername\userhomes (or whateveryou call it)$\%username%\

[sc302 Veteran]

  p858snake said:

...No, that is a disjusting way to share, and that will easily create hundreds of shares you have to manage espically in a school enviroment, you should only be sharing one folder and then having the user folders under that.

You should be using something like:

-Root Home Folder Dir (Shared (Preferably Hidden))
|-- User One
|-- User Two

and then your share path is simply \\servername\userhomes (or whateveryou call it)$\%username%\

the only time that would become an issue is if you are setting it up like this and have to share out a lot of folders. if the damage is already done than this is not an issue. I personally do not like everyone seeing each others folders when they just browse to the share, so I do the extra work to share out the individuals folders and $ them. Good, bad, indifferent, that is the way I have always done it and will continue to do it. I don't always play by the rules.

Btw, what is there to manage once it has been set up properly? Delete directory, the share and everything in it is gone. You may have to give someone access to the share, but is that a really big deal anyway, it is easy enough to perform that function with a custom script or custom link.

[DrCheese]

  Quote

I personally do not like everyone seeing each others folders when they just browse to the share

Then you just use Access-based Enumeration shares so that users only see what they have access to. They won't see folders they have no rights to.

This is built into Windows 2008 shares (and is on by default iirc) 2003 requires a small update (free from microsoft)

Saying the damage is already done isn't really a great way to look at things.

[p858snake]

It shouldn't matter if other users can see them, because you should be protecting them properly with the correct rights and it will be a known fact that they exist anyway.

[sc302 Veteran]

  p858snake said:

It shouldn't matter if other users can see them, because you should be protecting them properly with the correct rights and it will be a known fact that they exist anyway.

Correct, but hiding what they don't need to see (even just folders that people don't have access to within them) is something that is requested quite often. Sometimes appearance means more than functionality.

And saying that the damage is already done, fixing it will not do anything for functionality, fixing it will only create more work which you are trying to avoid anyway by doing it \servername\homedrive\%username%

Both ways get you the same result, ooo you have to enable the share on the individual folder which takes exctly how long in your mind? I don't know about you but I can scipt it to run in about 10 seconds with little editing.

Edited June 21, 2009 by sc302

[thebrad]

Well at the moment, I have the user shares set up like \\server\data$\user\students\studentusername and I'm having no problem with that, but Office doesn't seam to like it if this is set as its default file location :/

[sc302 Veteran]

start simple.....

on a pc, redirect my documents to that share path, if it works without issue, move on to redirecting with the server. check you event logs for issues.

[thebrad]

Thanks for the replies, we have fixed it. It seams the office applications needed 'list folder contents' rights on the root of the share. Then we set the adm's correctly again and that seams to have fixed it. :)