I am a sysadmin with a few Windows 7 Professional machines in our network. The current setup for our users is folder-redirection, with offline files enabled for users with laptops (some of which are said Win7 users). This works fine, just, any shortcut files that are in the users profile (that are made available offline) make the target of the shortcut available offline aswell. Though I see the benefit of this, it is not a behaviour we want. For example if user 'dave' has a shortcut on \\server1\users\dave\desktop, that points to \\server2\files\shortcut_target.doc (i.e. a directory we don't want to have offline file behaviour with) - it will make both files available offline. I'm positive it is related to shortcuts, as the files are always shortcutted somewhere in the users profile and the majority of these files come from word's recent documents folder, and other similar folders for different program. If theres anyway to change this behaviour please let me know, even if it is just a registry edit. Thanks Dan

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Hi, “For example if user 'dave' has a shortcut on \\server1\users\dave\desktop, that points to \\server2\files\shortcut_target.doc (i.e. a directory we don't want to have offline file behaviour with) - it will make both files available offline.” Based on my knowledge, Windows only synchronous the shortcut in this offline folder. What do you mean “it will make both files available offline.” For further research, I suggest you may enable sync log and try to repro this problem. Then move to Event Viewer -> Applications and Service Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> OfflineFiles, right click SyncLog and chose “Save all event as…” to export these event log. Here is my e-mail: v-tanzhe@microsoft.com. You could contact me, then I would assist you for this problem. Please refer following to enable SyncLog: How to enable the "SyncLog Channel" =========================================== Offline Files defines four event channels through the Windows Event Viewer. The channels are listed under the following hierarchy in the left-most pane of the viewer, Event Viewer -> Applications and Service Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> OfflineFiles If you see only one channel in the event viewer it will be the "Operational" channel. The remaining channels are known as Analytic or Debug channels. The Windows Event Viewer does not display these additional channels by default. They must first be enabled. To enable Analytic and Debug logs, highlight the "OfflineFiles" entry in the Event Viewer left pane. Select the "View" menu and check the option titled "Show Analytic and Debug Logs". While four channels are defined, only two are currently in use in Windows 7. SyncLog Channel ================ This channel is of the "Analytic" type as defined by the Windows Event viewer. Because this is an "Analytic" channel, you must enable the channel before events are generated to the associated log. To enable this channel, right click on the "SyncLog" entry in the left pane of the Event Viewer. Select the "Enable Log" option. This may also be configured using the channel’s Properties page, also accessible through the Event Viewer. When you no longer want to collect SyncLog events, disable the channel using the same method ("Disable Log" option). The purpose of this channel is to generate events specific to synchronization activities within the Offline Files service. This may be helpful when questions arise about why a particular item is or is not being synchronized or questions about why a particular sync operation is failing. 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.

Hi there, did you ever work out a solution for this? I too have exactly the same issue and am struggling to work out how to disable this behaviour. Help! Darryl.

Hi there, did you ever work out a solution for this? I too have exactly the same issue and am struggling to work out how to disable this behaviour. Help! Darryl.

That is completely weird. Did you find a suitable solution for this? Thanks! Dinosrules from GeeksFL.com

I've been struggling with the same issue here as well. User home directories are marked to cache with the offline files feature, but when there are shortcuts in that share the offline files service caches both the .lnk shortcut file, and then also looks at the file it is pointed to and caches that target which can be on a completely different server or share. This behavior becomes a problem when users resume from sleep and the drives don't re-establish fast enough for the offline files service so the share gets served out of the cache. When that happens, all other files located on that share that shouldn't be getting cached become unavailable for that 2-3 minute interval before the connection gets re-established. Extremely annoying. I am pretty sure I can make a workaround by setting the group policy on the offline files service to exclude caching of .lnk files, but that is a kludge and since we redirect the user's desktop to the home directory, shortcuts located there will be blinking in and out of existence. We need a hotfix to make the offline files stop parsing the target files of shortcuts and trying to cache those as well. It's not like that behavior is documented anywhere in the Technet articles on how offline files operates and it causes problems.