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10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0

- Lesson 25 -
Working Offline

 

In this lesson, you learn how to take all the steps necessary to work from an offsite location.

Working offline is when you're not connected to your network server because you're offsite. When you're not at the office, you have to have some tools available that let you work on a remote computer; then later (when you're back in the office) you have to get the information on your office computer matched up with your offsite computer.

Understanding Offline Computing

When you're working in Microsoft Exchange Client at your office, you're connected to a Microsoft Exchange server computer and the two computers interact continuously. When you work at home or when you're traveling, and you can't connect to the server, you do your work offline.

When you are offline, you don't have access to the elements of your Exchange system; therefore, the objects that are stored on the server aren't available to you. The server objects are your mailbox (and all its folders) and all the public folders. The only components that are on your local drive are the personal folders you've created.

To take care of this situation, Microsoft Exchange includes a set of tools that let you work on some of these folders on a remote computer, and then either dial in from an offsite location to connect to the server, or connect to the server when you return to the office and synchronize the contents of your folders.

Working offline is different from using Exchange through a Web browser in several ways. The most important is that you do not have to be connected to a network to do your work. This is important for two reasons. First, your company may not allow remote access to their Exchange servers. In this situation, working offline is your only choice when at a remote location without a network connection. Second, it may be inconvenient or too expensive to use the Web access feature. If you are doing your work on an airplane or in another country, it may be too cost prohibitive to

use the Web access feature. This may also be true if you have a large amount of work to do. Finally, you may simply prefer the Exchange client interface to the Web interface.

Preparing to Work Offline

You have to set up your Microsoft Exchange Client software to prepare for working offline. This is not difficult and should only take a few minutes.

There are two steps involved in getting ready to work offline:

  • You need to prepare the computer you'll be using offline by installing the Microsoft Exchange Client software.

  • While you're connected to the network, you need to tell Microsoft Exchange Client that certain folders must be available for offline work.

If you're using a portable computer, you usually can connect to the network (or your office computer for access to the network) through cables. From a home computer or other offsite computer, you'll have to connect via telephone lines. Have the administrator assist you in setting up the hardware and software necessary to use these connections.

Preparing for Offline Folders

An offline folder is a replica of a folder that is stored on the server. Mailbox folders and Favorites folders are the folders available for offline work.

You have to tell Microsoft Exchange Client that a folder (or multiple folders) will be used offline. You do this so that the system knows it has to synchronize the offline folder with the folder on your office computer. You only have to do this once.


Synchronize Normally, when you copy a file or folder between computers, the contents of the source file
replace the contents of the target file. Synchronization, however, is a process by which Exchange looks at the contents of both folders and then places information in both so the contents are identical. This means you can work offline and also work online, and then you can synchronize your work so that both folders have all the work you've done in both places. (This is not unlike the Briefcase option in Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 workstation.)

 To make a folder available offline, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the Mailbox folder or the Favorites folder, whichever you want to make available offline.

2.
Choose Properties from the shortcut menu, and then click the Synchronization tab of the Properties dialog box (see Figure 25.1).

3.
In the This Folder Is Available section, select When Offline or Online. Then click OK.

4.
When the information dialog box about the offline folder file appears, click Yes to create the file.

5.
In the Offline Folder File Settings dialog box (shown in Figure 25.2), choose an encryption setting or choose no encryption.

Figure 25.1 The online/offline choices and information about synchronization are found in the folder's Properties dialog box.



Figure 25.2 You have to establish the configuration for your offline folder file.


Encryption Exchange can encrypt the file so it cannot be read outside of the Microsoft Exchange Client software. The choice between the two encryption schemes should be made based on whether or not you are using file compression on your hard drive. If you are, choose Compressible Encryption.

 

6. Accept the default name EXCHANGE.OST for the offline folder file. If the system administrator feels a different file name should be chosen, enter that.

7.
When you finish making your choices, click OK. Microsoft Exchange Client creates the file.

Downloading the Address Book

To work offline, you should have an address book on your offline computer. Of course, Exchange's Address Book is kept on the server. When you are working offline and can't get to the server, you'll need a copy of the Address Book so that when you click a button to see a list of users, the information is available. You can download the Address Book by following these steps:

1. Open the Tools menu, point to Synchronize, and choose Download Address Book.

2.
From the Download Offline Address Book dialog box (shown in Figure 25.3), choose one of the following formats for the Address Book.

  • Choose Download Offline Address Book to move all the data in the Address Book to your hard drive. Select this choice if you want details about users (such as telephone numbers, titles, and so on) or if you are going to be sending encrypted messages.

  • Choose Download Offline Address Book Without Details Information if you only need access to mailbox names.

3.
Click OK.

Now when you work offline, the Address Book is available. This means you can run Microsoft Exchange Client, compose messages, place files into folders, and do many of the tasks you do when you're in the office and connected to the network. The difference is that everything is being stored on your offline computer instead of being placed on the server.

Figure 25.3 You can choose whether to download all the details in the address book.

Coming Back Online

When you reconnect to the server and launch Microsoft Exchange Client, the synchronization process makes sure the folders contain identical items. At this point, you can send the mail you composed to all the appropriate user mailboxes. To synchronize your folders, open the Tools menu and choose Synchronize. Then choose This Folder to synchronize only the selected folder or All Folders to synchronize all folders.

In this lesson, you learned how to establish the tools to work offline on a computer that isn't permanently connected to your network.

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