When you look at the offline settings of a share there are 3 options: 1. Only the files and programs that users specify will be available offline 2. All files an programs that users open from the share will be automatically available offline. 3. Files or programs from the share will not be available offline Which of these 3 options will cause windows 7 to automatically make shares available offline? The reason why i am asking this is that when offline files is enabled in windows 7 i see windows 7 caching files automatically from shares that are configured for option 1 (manual caching) and i would like to know if that behaviour is normal. You can reproduce this behaviour by simply opening a word document on a network share (configured for manual caching), then pull the network plug and voila, the file has been made offline without me configuring anything. That share is also not a redirected folder.

Hi, Thanks for posting in Microsoft TechNet forums. Please refer to this technical article and pay attention to the command line section: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755136.aspx Hope it helps! Best Regards Magon Liu TechNet Subscriber Support in forum. If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Magon, thanks for your post, but that still does not explain why i can see that files are being cached/made available offline, that i did not manually make available offline on a share that was configured for manual caching. Essentially what it comes down to: Manual caching caches (word) documents AUTOMATICALLY. Is this correct?

Have you checked if you have any group policies that control this behaviour?

I just found out something that explains why certain documents are made available offline, even documents on a share that was configured for manual caching. It appears that if there are shortcuts to documents present in a share (such as your home directory) and that share was configured to be made available offline, then the documents that those shortcuts are pointing to are also made offline. So my next question is: Is there a way to prevent shortcuts from setting documents available offline? If there is not, why was it decided that offline available shortcuts to documents would make those document available offline as well? It makes offline files very in-transparent and difficult to manage in my opinion.

Hi, I believe the following articals can give us the answer and a better understanding of how do offline files work: Configuring New Offline Files Features for Windows 7 Computers Step-by-Step Guide How the synchronization in Windows 7 Offline Files works Best Regards,Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

@Magon, I red both links, there is no talk what so ever about shortcuts and offline files. I appreciate you trying to help out, but instead of throwing around some general guides in this topic, i would appreciate if we could remain focused on the shortcuts problem. Now, i found out that this used to be a problem in windows xp and there was a registry fix for that called LinkTargetCaching: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817275 Now i am beginning to wonder, is there a similar solution for windows 7?

Hi, I don't think the registry will still work on Windows 7. By default, the following file types are not cached: *.slm; *.mdb; *.ldb; *.mdw; *.mde; *.pst; *.db? If you would like to cache file automatically, redirect each user's My Documents to a network share, then set it to be available offline. Please also check Configuring Group Policy for Offline Files. Regards,Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

If anyone is interested, i found a workaround. The share that was made offline was a home directory to where my documents, the desktop and favorites was redirected. The homedirectory path is a DFS path, other shares also contain the dfs path. To prevent files to be made offline of shares other then the homedir, i not only disabled caching for those shares but i also disabled caching on the dfsroot of each domain controllers. This is the only way to properly prevent windows from setting documents offline. I still don't understand why windows 7 is to trying to set some documents (to where shortcuts exist) offline.