Working Offline

From within Outlook, you can choose to synchronize selected folders to an offline store, which you will be able to access when disconnected from the network.

By default, when you work offline, Outlook will synchronize your Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes folders. You can change which folders are synchronized by selecting the File | Offline Settings menu in Outlook. The Offline Settings dialog box is displayed.

Tick the box next to each folder that you wish to be able to access while working offline. Press OK to save your changes.

In order to work offline, you must select Work Offline from the File menu in Outlook. When you do this for the first time, Outlook will copy across all the data in the selected folders to an offline store. This may take several minutes if you have a lot of data. Working offline subsequent times will be a lot quicker because only the changes will be synchronized.

Once the synchronization is complete, Outlook will inform you that you must restart the Outlook program in order to continue using Outlook in offline mode.

It is actually possible to use the offline store immediately, without restarting, but if you want to receive appointment reminders or send and receive mail, while offline you should restart Outlook.

When you are offline, the name of the Softalk Share Server store will reflect the fact that you are working offline:

Once offline, you may make changes to any of the data in the folders you have chosen to synchronize and these changes will be applied to the online store the next time you reconnect to the online store.

You can reconnect to the online store by selecting File | Work Online in Outlook.

If changes have been made to the same item in both the offline and online stores, Outlook will prompt you for an action when you work online. You will have the option to keep either the change made to the online store or the change made to the offline store.

If you always want to keep changes made in the online store or if you always want to keep changes made in the offline store, you can change the setting in the Conflicts page of the Offline Settings property sheet.