From TNPC issue #4.25...

Outlook 2002 Cures Counter Problem

by T.J. Lee
December 13, 2001

If you use Microsoft Outlook and remotely connect to an Exchange server, you should be aware that Outlook XP/2002 fixes an annoying glitch that was driving one of my clients bonkers. Granted that this annoyance is not going to affect everyone. Here goes... when you're using Outlook in offline mode and then connect to Exchange Server, Outlook 2000 displays a dialog box that counts through your Inbox messages, checking to see which ones are new and need to be updated to your remote machine. This is not usually a big deal unless you have a lot of messages in your Inbox. If there are a large number of messages you find yourself staring at a counter that slowly ticks though the entire message count. On a slow 56 Kbps dial-up connection it can absolutely painful.

The good news is that Outlook XP/2002 does away with this counter dialog and replaces it with a new dialog box. This new dialog is still annoying in that it does not tell you anything very useful, but it does not count through your entire message count; this latter feature saved my client a substantial amount of time.

If you're suffering with this problem you might look at upgrading to Office XP on the remote client workstation/laptop PC(s).

You can reach T.J. Lee at:
mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com

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