Overview

One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Outlook is its ability to gather messages and other information from many sources and deliver them to you, no matter where you might be. Staying in touch whether you're at home, in the office, or on another continent becomes a matter of a few mouse clicks.

This chapter is not just for travelers, though. Many people work remotely because their mail server is not in the same building and they don't stay connected to it all the time.

After describing the different ways you can work remotely with Microsoft Outlook, this chapter also describes two techniques available only to Corporate or Workgroup (CW) mode users Remote Mail and synchronization with Microsoft Exchange Server. We also look at methods for synchronizing your folders between locations in a non Exchange Server environment.

Remote Working Environments

Outlook offers three ways to work remotely:

• Online connected directly to your network for an extended period of time, but from a remote location over a dial-up link or via the Internet.
• Offline connected to the mail server only when you want to download and upload mail. You compose and read mail when you are disconnected.
• Synchronized (only available with the Microsoft Exchange Server service) offline, but with mirror copies of both your mailbox folders and favorite public folders on the server and your remote computer.