Quick Introduction to Cached Exchange Mode
From Outlook 2003 onwards, Microsoft introduced a new feature called the Cached Exchange Mode. When you enable this feature in Outlook 2003, you can continue working on the data stored in the mailbox even if no connection is available and you are not logged onto the Exchange server. This is because Outlook makes a copy of the mailbox stored on the Exchange server on your local computer in the form of offline folder files - OST files - and allows you to make changes in it even if you are not connected to the network. In fact, even if you are online and you suddenly lose connection, Outlook allows you to continue working on the local copy without any interruptions. As soon as a connection is established, Outlook will ensure that all the changes are synchronized automatically between the local copy and the server mailbox. This ensures that even if there is any damage to the server mailbox, an exchange recovery is possible using the local OST files.Let us look at some of the major benefits that working in the Cached Exchange Mode, offers to users of Outlook-
" While working in Cached Exchange Mode, you do not have to worry about the speed of the connection or of sudden network outages. In fact, you can make best use of the bandwidth available to you as synchronization takes place depending on the bandwidth available. If the connection is slow, only the headers are synchronized.
" Once the messages have been cached locally, it is a lot faster to access the messages, attachments and other items stored in the OST files. Even though synchronizing changes made in the items such as moving messages, marking messages as read, composing messages and editing require some data to be sent across the network to the mailbox on the server, this does not affect the performance of the Outlook or have any impact on the user operations. In fact, it allows one to work more efficiently and makes it easier to carry out quick exchange recovery, when the need arises.
An Outlook user should bear in mind that the time taken to complete the synchronization the first time around will be more but will also vary depending on the size of the mailbox and the speed of the connection to the Exchange server. You will not able to access the data in the OST file or work on it till the synchronization has been complete. It is therefore highly recommended that the first time you use Outlook in the Cached Exchange Mode, you use the fastest connection possible.
If any changes are made in the mailbox on the server or in the local copy, Outlook will synchronize these changes in both the places. If there are any synchronization problems in the OST file due to corruption issues, you should still be able to carry out an exchange recovery using third-party tools such as Advanced exchange recovery from DataNumen. This tool will help you fix fairly severe synchronization issues so that your local copy and the data in the mailbox are up-to-date at all times.