Why would you clone a user profile?

Cloning a machine's profile gives it a head start and reduces the impact on the servers. For example, if you have a large number of new staff starting at once it can generate significant demand on the server/s, as each machine tries to build its index for the first time. It can also be confusing to users, as search results won't be reliable until it has completed the index. So cloning a profile gives them a head start and reduces the impact on the network.

What might you want to clone?

You probably don't want to clone everything, but you might want to give each person the same list of locations by pre-loading the group or groups that they need. You might want to ensure that they all have the same set-up i.e. that the user preferences are the same. You might also want to provide each machine with an index either fully or partially built.

Possible Gotcha

If your index contains many locations but you then set the indexer to only index those locations that are used, upon start-up by the new user, the indexer will see that the user has either only a few locations or none and will clean out of the index all of the locations that are not needed, undoing all your work in creating a full index. Note that it will also do the clean out before it adds any new content and this can give the impression that something has stalled.

Start clean!

Whilst you could just copy your own profile to another machine, this is not a good idea. Firstly your database contains your filing history which you may not want others to know. Secondly your filing cache contains cached copies of the emails you have sent and received. Thirdly your index may contain emails from locations that are simply not relevant to the new staff.


So the best thing to do is start with a clean profile and set it up the way that you want. An easy way to do this is to:


  1. Rename your profile temporarily so that you can restore it later
  2. Build the new profile that you will later clone to other machines
  3. Rename your profile back when you are finished


The following instructions take you through this step by step.

Renaming your profile

Your profile contains all the local files required for PentagonMail Assistant (see Files and what they do for details and the location of the profile folder). You won't be able to rename this folder without first stopping the PentagonMail Assistant process as follows:


  1. Stop the indexer. To do this, from the tray icon select Indexing Status and then from ribbon menu select Stop Indexing. Note that if the indexer is busy it can take quite a while for it to stop.
  2. End the background processes. Follow the instructions on Terminating the background processes cleanly. 
  3. This should have released any locks on the folder and its content so that you can now rename the folder. For example you might change its name from PentagonMail Assistant to PentagonMail Assistant #

Restart PentagonMail Assistant

To restart PentagonMail Assistant you can either log out and back in again or simply run the Pentagon.Mail.Launcher.exe which is typically in C:\Program Files\PentagonMail Assistant\<version>\


This will start the indexer and background filer and will create a new PentagonMail Assistant profile folder with a bare database and index.

Reinstate the licence and add the content

Depending on what type of licenses that you own, follow the guidance to re-activate your own license (don't worry that it's your own personal license).


IMPORTANT: You need to decide whether the index should contain all the messages in the locations or not. Indexing all the locations in the group has the advantage that the new user will have everything already indexed for them when they start. The potential disadvantages are that: you may not want them to have everything, the index may be very large, and it may take quite a while to generate and then copy to the candidate machines. An alternative is to set PentagonMail Assistant to only index used locations and then file a message to each of the locations that the new users will need, as this will trigger the indexer to harvest messages from those locations.


By default PentagonMail Assistant will index all locations so if you want to limit it to only those locations that have been used, change the Indexer setting now.


Now add the Group/s that the new staff are going to need. If you file into M-Files you will just need to connect to the M-Files Group. If you file to a file system or cloud storage you will need to connect to a File System Group.


Upon connecting, PentagonMail Assistant will start to index all the locations unless you have changed it to only index used ones. In the latter case it will initially do nothing as you have yet to use any location, in which case file a test message to each of the locations that your staff are going to need.

Wait for the indexing to complete

Depending on your earlier choices it could take a few seconds or a number of hours to build the index. To check the status, open the Indexer Status dialogue and sort/filter by the Status column.

Only continue when you are sure that indexing is complete.

Define the user settings

Via the Settings dialogue, ensure the options meet your needs 

Ready to go?

Check it all. Make sure that: you have the settings the way you want them, the list of locations is right for the team and that the search results meet the needs of the team too.


Rename this profile and reinstate your own one

You now need to rename this profile to something that makes sense to you and then name your original one back.


  1. Stop the indexer. As before, from the tray icon select Indexing Status and then from ribbon menu select Stop Indexing
  2. End the background processes. Follow the instructions on Terminating the background processes cleanly
  3. This should have released any locks on the folder and its content and you should now be able to rename the folder
  4. Rename the currentPentagon  Mail to something likePentagon  Mail Clone
  5. You can then rename your own one fromPentagon  Mail # back to PentagonMail Assistant
  6. Then re-start PentagonMail Assistant (see above)



You can now copy the contents of your clone folder to any new machine making sure that you change the folder name back to PentagonMail Assistant.  

The license will not be valid for the new user so they will need to activate their own license in the usual way.