Let's start immediately by specifying the objective so as to understand well what we want to do, ensuring everyone that it is an easy but not simple to understand procedure, which meets a very common need. If I use Microsft Outlook from a home computer, the conversations and mail are saved in the history of this PC, in a specific folder.
If I then use Outolook from another computer, perhaps at work or on the laptop, the conversation history and EMail, if activated, is saved in a folder of this second PC.
What we want to do is that the history of the same Messenger account and the Outlook Email is saved on any computer you use, in the same shared folder .
This can be done for any system folder that stores the logs of a program, the history of a chat program, the cache of a web browser or whatever you want .
READ ALSO: How to move programs from C: to another disk
While this can be done with OneDrive, Google Drive or other similar programs, in this guide we use DropBox, the famous online service that allows you to have 2 GB of space to keep data saved on the internet ; (Onedrive can certainly be used in the same way).
Thanks to the online archiving program, these files can be kept and synchronized (i.e. always the same and updated) on any computer you use.
After signing up for Dropbox and after installing Dropbox, the My DropBox folder appears in Windows Explorer on your computer.
The files inside are shared and synchronized between all the computers used.
You can then tell MSN Messenger (from the menu Tools -> Options -> History ) to use the folder "MSN history " (to be created) inside My DropBox as a place to save the history of chat conversations.
Since the new Windows Live Messenger also allows you to chat on Facebook, this will please many people.
For Outlook mail instead you should buy an Exchange server and I don't think there are free solutions to synchronize the EMail and the address book.
But let's take another very famous chat program which, personally, I consider the best, the universal chat Pidgin .
with Pidgin you can chat with friends from Facebook, MEssenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and other chats, from a single interface.
Pidgin saves the history of chat conversations in a specific internal Windows folder and does not allow you to change it.
But what you can do is create a symbolic link to that folder and put it on DropBox.
The symbolic link is only possible on NTFS formatted disks and is different from the normal link.
It allows you to use the same folder or the same file, from multiple different locations, opening them in different paths while, instead, the normal link opens from the same path as the linked file.
Beyond what it means (it's not very easy as a concept), creating a symbolic link is very simple.
First of all, locate the hidden folder of the Pidgin history which, on Windows 7 is C: \ Users \ username \ AppData \ Roaming \ .purple while on Windows XP it is in C: \ Documents and Settings \ username \ username \ Application Data \. purple .
Right click on the .purple folder and select Cut .
Then go to My DropBox, press the right button on the blank and select paste .
With Windows 7, 8 and Windows 10, now go to the Start menu, search for and open the Dos prompt by right clicking on it and running it with administrator privileges.
then write this command:
mklink / D "C: \ Users \ username_ AppData \ Roaming \ .purple" "C: \ My Dropbox \ .purple"
Going now to the Roaming folder, you will find the .purple folder which, now, is a symbolic link.
For Microsoft Outlook, the symbolic link of the Outlook.pst file must be created which is located in the Windows 7 folder C: \ Users \ username_ AppData \ Local \ Microsoft \ Outlook
Windows XP cannot create this type of symbolic link so you have to use the small Microsoft SysInternals Junction tool.
Download Junction, extract the zip file to C: / Junction
Open the dos prompt ( Start -> Run -> cmd -> enter ) and write:
cd C: / Junction
Press Enter and then give the following command:
junction "C: \ Documents and Settings \ username_ Application Data \ .purple" "C: \ My Dropbox \ .purple"
Obviously, before that, you had to cut and paste the .purple folder.
On the other computers the same procedure of the symbolic link or of the Junction must be done but the original folder of Pidgin, the .purple, must be deleted and not cut and pasted because otherwise in My DropBox the one of the first computer would be overwritten.
If you want to keep the old history present in other computers, you have to copy the files inside and not the entire .purple folder which instead must be deleted.
This procedure can be done for any other history, log or cache file of any other program (Yahoo Messenger, Digsby, AIM) and, if desired, also with system folders and download folders from Emule or from Torrent (space permitting in DropBox).
DropBox and symbolic links also work on Linux systems so the idea of having a shared folder works on any computer
The goal of sharing the same system folder or a program such as chat history, cache or any other folder between different computers has been achieved.
The same procedure can also be done for individual files, creating the symbolic link with the mkdir command (without lo / D).
If you have not understood anything or you have doubts about the symbolic links, ask me the questions you want by telling me where you got stuck.
To create symbolic links or junction points from the Windows interface, with the mouse, without using the command prompt you can use some programs that allow you to move folders on Windows from one disk to another, easily and quickly.
There are tools for Windows and Mac, which I mentioned in other articles, to do these operations quickly and:
- share folders on DropBox without moving them
- Synchronize and share folders in Onedrive without moving them
- Synchronize any online folder in the Clouds with symbolic links
