Chapter 11: Working Away from Your Office

Overview

Chapter at a Glance

Work with Outlook items while offline, page 283
Automatically respond to messages, page 287

In today's workplace, communication, efficiency, and mobility are crucial. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 can help you improve your performance in all of these areas by providing a means of connecting to your information quickly and securely.

If you have an Internet connection and your organization provides remote connection to its Microsoft Exchange server or is running Microsoft Outlook Web Access (a feature of Exchange), you can access your Exchange account from home, from a client site, from a hotel room, from a tradeshow booth, or even from your local Starbucks. For example, you might need to access your e-mail while working from home, or you might need to set up a meeting with staff at the office while visiting out-of-state clients.

See Also For information about ways to share folders and work with other people, see Chapter 10, "Collaborating with Other People."

Whether or not you have an Internet connection, you will want to use the Out Of Office Assistant to let people know that you are away from your desk and that your ability to respond promptly to messages and requests might be impacted until you return.

In this chapter, you will explore the tools Outlook provides for working remotely. You will examine the ways you can access an Exchange Server account when your computer is not connected directly to your organization's network, and how to ensure that you have up-to-date information when you are working offline. Then you will work with the Out Of Office Assistant, including the new functionality available when your organization is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

See Also Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries on pages xxxvii–lxv.

Important 

No practice files are required to complete the exercises in this chapter. For more information about practice files, see "Using the Book's CD" on page xxv.

Troubleshooting 

Graphics and operating system-related instructions in this book reflect the Windows Vista user interface. If your computer is running Microsoft Windows XP and you experience trouble following the instructions as written, please refer to the "Information for Readers Running Windows XP" section at the beginning of this book.