Synching E-mail to PC

This is highly recommended for all laptop users.

Outlook makes it very easy to synchronize all your e-mail and calendars, etc. to your local PC. It copies everything to an "offline storage" file if cache mode is enabled in your profile. 

This will keep a file up to date on your local computer. The default name for the file is outlook.ost. If you ever lose the connection to the server you can keep working off of this copy. We've had one report of Cached Exchange Mode causing a computer to slow significantly.

Cache Mode in Outlook 2003

To verify this has been enabled please follow these steps in Outlook 2003:

• Tools;
• E-mail Accounts;
• Next button;
• Change button;
• On this screen make sure there is a checkmark in the Use Cached Exchange Mode box.

Cache Mode in Outlook 2007

To verify this has been enabled (or set it) please follow these steps in Outlook 2007:

• Tools menu;
• Account Settings...;
• On the E-mail tab, highlight Exchange line and click on Change button;
• In the Change E-mail Account window, ensure there is a checkmark in the Use Cached Exchange Mode box and click Next (or press Cancel if you didn't change anything);
• You should be back at the Account Settings window. Click on Finish (or Close if you didn't change anything).
• If you changed the setting you should get a popup window that advises you to restart Outlook in order for the change to take effect. When you re-launch Outlook 2007 it will begin to make a copy of your Mailbox contents onto your local hard-drive. This will take some time. Not all items will be immediately available. In the case of large mailboxes and/or on slow internet connections this can take an hour or more.