AutoArchive disappeared in Outlook

Question

I have a problem with one user on our network. Her AutoArchive functionality disappeared in Outlook 2003. I already googled around. There is no group policy within the network that would block it. (All the other users have the same group policy and there it is working without any problems.) Another recommendation a person made in a forum was about changing a PSTsomething entry in the registry to 0. (I forgot the name if the exact entry.) But this enty was already set to 0.

Does someone have another idea what it could be?

EDIT: We recreated the whole user profile. This solved it. Sadly we do not know exactly what it was. But the accepted solution was probably the case.

Solution 1

In addition to DisablePst, look at the following registry setting:

Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Preferences\
DWORD value: DoAging

This should be 1 to allow AutoArchive.

Source

Solution 2

If its not a policy then the reg entries for the install are likely corrupt, doing a "repair install" of office will probably fix it.

Else, you can backup your registry and try the following:

Found this in a forum:

It can also depend on the value of a registry entry (per machine) here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\ Outlook\

(your \Office\XX.X\Outlook value may be different than mine - use the largest value folder)

and look for the DisablePst value in the right hand pane.

If you are sure it is not a problem in your work environment, you can turn it on and off per machine as follows:

If DisablePst is missing (usually) or set to zero, you will see the option.

If DisablePst is set to 1, you will not see the option.

To create DisablePst and then set it, create a new REG_DWORD

Value Name: DisablePst Data Type: REG_DWORD Value: 1

You will have to restart Outlook to see the effect.

You may take a look at machines where it works and where it doesn't work to see the difference.

Comments

[heavyd]

You will probably get better answers for this question over on Server Fault(serverfault.com), which is similar to Super User, but geared towards IT Pros and network admins. If you would like to try it over there, please don't re-post it, flag your question and ask a moderator to move it.

[Raffael]

I actually decided to post it here because it is about Outlook and not about Exchange or the AD (= server side). But I might do this after the bounty ended.

[Raffael]

Yes, all other users do have this option. And many of them are using it. I was hoping to get around creating a new profile. But in this case I have to. Thanks for the help. I will give you a +1 when this was successfull.

[Raffael]

I have seen this forum entry too and we already tried this. DisablePst is set to 0. The strange thing is that it does work when we log in with another user on the same PC. So it can not be the installation itself. It has to be a user setting.

[Grizly]

Or an addon. They can break things too!

[Grizly]

Hmm, have you tried actually deleting that reg entry? Note, each user has their own registry settings, so if you created a new profile for that user on the computer (even temporarily for testing), you could find out if its their reg settings/addons etc. It could even be the short-cut itself being modified with the "/safe" switch. Does autoarchive require task-scheduler? Hmm

[Raffael]

There is no addon installed. I have not tried to delete it. I will try the other things you mentioned. But I don't think it will help.

[Stephen Jennings]

Other users on the same computer do have the option? If so, it's a little blunt but creating a new Windows profile (rename/delete the current one) should wipe out whatever odd setting got created. You could always put the old profile back in place if it doesn't work.

[Dave Sexton]

Probably better to do a registry search for DoAging - mine was in a different location.

[harrymc]

@DaveSexton: It will be in different locations for different versions of Office.

[Raffael]

This is the exact same answer as the one from Grizly. It did not work for me back then.