Connector downloading entire mailbox?

[mikelcu]

When I initially set up a Zimbra account with the connector, it apparently begins to download a complete copy of my Zimbra mailbox, which is pretty much enormous (~28k messages in many folders). All the folders appear as empty until this download is complete, after which everything shows up. There are no options in the connector settings to disable/enable this (or any other behavior, really), so I can't tell if there is something set wrong or if this is proper default behavior. If it's not correct, where might the setting be to turn it off?

If it is correct, then _why_? Aside from the fact that this will automatically eat ~1GB+ of disk space on the client system, it also circumvents the entire point of keeping mail only on the server, which could be considered a real security problem.

The directory that grows large on my system is here (~850MB):

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

The same directory when testing out Exchange or Groupwise in non-caching mode against a mailbox with identical contents is ~ 1MB.

ZCS NE 4.5.7 running Ubuntu
Outlook 2003 SP2 running on Windows XP SP2


-Mike

[mikelcu]

ping....


Any ideas on this yet? Can anyone say if it is expected behavior of the connector?

-Mike

[sam]

This is the intended behavior. You must sync all your content from the server to you machine once. From then on, only the deltas are sync'd between the client and server. One of the advantages is the ability to work with your mailbox when you are offline.

[mikelcu]

Is there any intention to make this behavior configurable? I can see the benefits of keeping a local copy like that, however this could be problematic for people with very large mailboxes (what happens when it hits 2 or 4 GB on FAT32?). Also, what about the security implications? It concerns me that every laptop would have a full copy of the user's mailbox with no option to prevent it...


-Mike

[Klug]

There's a RFE about this, vote for it : Bug 11962 - Outlook Connector Online Mode