Outlook 2010 produces "A File Error Has Occurred" when creating Signatures and user has a Roaming Profile

Question

I've come across a problem that occurred in Windows 7 SP1, with Outlook 2010 SP1 with users connected to a Server 2008 R2 environment with Roaming Profiles and in particular Roaming App Data.

When you try to create a new Outlook Signature on a new user you get:

 "A file error has occurred"  
 \\server\FolderRedirections\%User%\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures\

Solution 1

The fix for this is to do the following as the User:

1. Open Windows (File) Explorer and type %AppData% in the Address Bar
2. Navigate to ...\Microsoft\Signatures
3. Right click on the Signatures folder, select Properties, Offline Files and click Sync Now

Once successfully synced you should be able to create Signatures from Outlook.

Note this does not seem to happen on WinXP, and no matter how many times the user logs on and off, this folder doesn't seem to Sync.

Solution 2

We have this issue with Outlook 2013 and Roaming Profiles/folder redirection. The fix for us was to reset the Sync Centre database, like so;

Open Regedit and go to the following key; HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\CSC\Parameters

Create a DWORD called "FormatDatabase" and set the value to 1 to reset the Sync Centre DB on the next reboot.