Redirect Favorites special folder

Redirect Favorites special folder

I was looking for how you could redirect the Favorites folder along with "My Documents" via a gpo and found a very good explanation on Windowmaker's blog and also a dowloadable custom gpo. The full explanation can be found on the windowmaker´s blog.

Remember that it will not redirect current favorites in the local profile, rather create a new favorites folder where you must copy your current ones.

Stefan

"Redirecting IE Favorites via GPO
I have seen this question multiple times at different web forums and newsgroups. Sometimes you want to redirect user's favorites to a network share, letting user access his favorites when he logs on from different workstations (or just for the sakes of backups).

The location of the user's favorites is determined by the following registry value:
Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell FoldersValue: FavoritesType: REG_EXPAND_SZDefault: %USERPROFILE%\Favorites

The fact that the registry value has a type of REG_EXPAND_SZ is actually very convenient - you can use environment variables when pointing to the location of the Favorites.

Now you can solve the issue of redirecting the folder using either logon script or something similar, but being GPO addict I decided to create an administrative template to handle the task.
Here is what I came up with: (you can download the ADM from here. No need to cut&paste)

CLASS USER CATEGORY !!WindowsComponentsCATEGORY !!InternetExplorerCATEGORY !!IE_Favorites KEYNAME "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" POLICY !!IE_Favorites #if version >= 4 SUPPORTED !!SUPPORTED_IE5 #endif EXPLAIN !!IE_Favorites_Location_Explain PART !!IE_Favorites_Location_Tip1 TEXT END PART PART !!IE_Favorites_Location EDITTEXT EXPANDABLETEXT VALUENAME Favorites DEFAULT "%USERPROFILE%\Favorites" REQUIRED END PART END POLICY END CATEGORY ;; IE_FavoritesEND CATEGORY ;; Internet ExplorerEND CATEGORY ;; WindowsComponents[strings]WindowsComponents="Windows Components"IE_Favorites="Favorites"IE_Favorites_Location="The path to the favorites folder"IE_Favorites_Location_Explain="Specify the path to the location of favorites. You can use variables like %USERPROFILE%, %USERNAME%, etc... Both local and UNC paths are valid."IE_Favorites_Location_Tip1="Specify the UNC path to the favorites location"InternetExplorer="Internet Explorer"SUPPORTED_IE5="at least Internet Explorer v5.01"