User Cannot Make Files and Folders Available Offline

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A user would like to make certain files or folders available for offline use. The user right-clicks on a file or folder, but Make Available Offline does not appear on the shortcut menu.

Possible Causes:

  • Terminal Services is enabled. Offline Files and Terminal Services are mutually exclusive.

  • The file or folder selected is actually a local file or folder and not on a network file share.

  • Offline Files is not enabled.

  • A Group Policy setting was applied to disable Offline Files.

  • The user is trying to make his or her redirected My Documents folder available offline but does not have access to the file share.

Diagnostic Tests:

Run Gpresult.exe to check if Terminal Services is enabled.

Validate that the file or folder is on a network file share and not a local share.

To verify that Offline Files is enabled

  1. Click My Computer .

  2. Click Tools , and then select Folder Options .

  3. Click the Offline File s tab.

  4. Select the check box beside Enable Offline Files .

If this procedure does not enable Offline Files, there might be a Group Policy setting that prevents Offline Files from being enabled. The Group Policy setting that controls this is:

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files\Enable

To see if this Group Policy setting is applied, run Gpresult.exe in verbose mode on the client computer. Look at the output of this tool and compare its output to the following sample:

KeyName: Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\NetCache

ValueName: **del.Enabled

ValueType: REG_SZ

Value:

If the output of Gpresult.exe on your client contains this text, this Group Policy setting is applied and you have disabled Offline Files. In this case, it is not possible to enable Offline Files until this Group Policy setting is changed.

If files and folders have the Make Available Offline shortcut menu option, but a redirected My Documents folder does not, then you should check that the My Documents folder is actually redirected successfully and is not local. Then verify that the user has appropriate file security to read and write to the location where the My Documents folder is redirected.

note-iconNote

When you have configured Group Policy Enable Offline Files with a setting of Disable , the Offline Files feature is disabled. Although the user can turn on and turn off the Enable Offline Files check box, as explained earlier, the Group Policy setting takes priority.