I have, supposedly, set-up offline files for my Documents folder in Vista.

The Documents folder for users are on a network share and they are set up to copy automatically to the client for offline working. The folder was automatically, and correctly created in Explorer, but it doesn't synchronise for offline.

The Offiline Files section of the control panel says that it is activated, but 0 bytes used. Synch Center tells me to right click on the files / folders I want and select "Available Offiline". But there is no such option on the right click menu!

The third option "Show offline files" show Computer, my personal folder and a heading for network drives. All of them are empty.

What is going on? How do I enable them?

Are they disabled via group policy?

I double checked that, they were "not set", I've turned all the "allow" type options to activated and given them sensible values, where appropriate and deactivated for those that disallow... It didn't make any difference.

You should just be able to right-click on a folder or network drive and select "make available offline" unless it's blocked by a policy or permission on the share.

Interesting, just logged on as Administrator, the admin can set folders to synch offline, my user can't!

I'll investigate further... Maybe it has something to do with the config or my profile is somehow corrupt?

Edit: The administrator can set the folders to synch, but normal users, or my user, which belongs to local admins cannot...

Yes it can be a gaping chasm between the two camps been caught by that before.

Solved!

I've been through countless blogs and knowledgebase articles and found nothing helpful. Then today, I accidentally stumbled across another KB article, which listed the offline settings of the share, which should have been enabled. I double checked, it had been disabled!

Odd that the administrator had the menu option, even though caching was disabled...

Anyway, it has just finished syncing, so I'll give it a try in a bit!

Edit:

Turned this to allow user to specify, from "not available".

Then the available offline appeared on my laptop, after re-logging... And my Home Drive now has lovely Sync symbols on all the icons!


And the Sync Center (sic) shows the offline files as available and synced!