Have you ever had the need to automatically generate your Exchange profiles? Those that have used ProfGen and NewProf will know of the massive time saving, something like this can save a rollout, and the support crew. They will also probably know about the hassle it is to get all the switches in the right order.

Now, before someone comes out and says there are plenty of 3rd party programs around you can purchase to do this, with a nice GUI, BEWARE!

Most of these 3rd party programs are just a GUI around the NewProf and ProfGen utilities! Some also make themselves look a little more special by adding in a couple of registry changes.

What most people don't know, is that there is a GUI for this, with a heap of registry changes added! You can also include hotfixes and patches!

This actual component is part of the ODK - IExpress Deployment Kit.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/exch55/Update/1/WIN98/EN-US/Idk99.EXE

You need to find the Designer.exe program, which is included in this. When you run this program, you are presented with a nice, easy to read GUI, as shown below.

As you change the settings, you will notice the commands changing in the window. You can either, write the PRF file and copy the ProfGen and NewProf commands from the window, or, you can select to Create Profile Package and run this as an executable.

The other tabs are shown below. All, in all, a really neat FREE package! This definitely works for Outlook 97/98, and the actual profile generation definately works with Outlook 2000, however I have not yet tested the other settings (Archive etc), as to whether they work. It is highly likely they will not work, due to the differences in the registry setting.