Cached Exchange Mode virtually eliminates delay connections found with legacy versions of Outlook when it had difficulties contacting the Exchange server. Because Outlook 2003 can automatically detect your network conditions, it switches between the local mailbox and the Exchange server mailbox to provide the optimal experience.

Cached Exchange mode always knows the status of the connection to the messaging server to determine online/offline status. Using Outlook 2003 with the “Use Local Copy of Mailbox” (Cached Exchange Mode) option enabled provides a better user experience when a connection to the Microsoft Exchange server is slow or unavailable. By providing different levels of optimization, Outlook 2003 automatically detects and adapts to changing connection environments, such as disconnecting from a corporate LAN, going offline, and then re-establishing a connection to the server via a dial-up connection.

Outlook relies on server-to-client notifications to determine when there are changes on the server that need to be downloaded. You no longer need to do manual refreshes to ensure your local mailbox is up to date. When operating in Cached mode, the notification process ensures that your local mailbox is always up to date.

In Cached Exchange Mode users work from a local copy of the mailbox called the OST file. Simultaneously, in the background, Outlook 2003 synchronizes data from the Exchange server to the local copy of the mailbox.
More reasons to take advantage of Cached Exchange Mode include:
Take advantage of Outlook’s new Junk E-mail filtering while running in Cached Exchange Mode.
E-mail is stored both locally and also on the Exchange Server Store.
Access e-mail via other technologies such as OWA, OMA, EAS and RPC over HTTP, because your e-mail is stored and accessible   from the server store (mailbox).

Some Outlook functions reduce the effectiveness of Cached Exchange Mode because they require network access or bypass designed Cached Exchange Mode functionality. The primary benefit of using Cached Exchange Mode is the reduction in network and server connection reliance. Features that rely on network access can cause delays in Outlook responsiveness or performance. Network dependent features include:
Delegate access.
Opening another user’s calendar or folders.
Accessing a public folder that has not been cached

These Outlook features require network access to retrieve necessary information which can cause a delayed response. These delays can occur intermittently rather than when the feature is accessed by the user.

Security is one of high importance for any organization and utilizing secure e-mail (S/MIME) are great ways to make your e-mail more secure.

The following guidelines should help you decide when to use each of these technologies.
When to use IRM to Protect Content: You should use IRM in all Office 2003 products if you want to control who can access your content and also control what those people can do with that content. IRM should meet most of your internal security messaging needs. See the accompanying section titled Information Rights Management for more information about IRM.
When to use S/MIME to Digitally Sign: You should digitally sign e-mail if you need to prove to your recipients that you are who you say you are and that the content was not tampered with in transit. S/MIME signing will not prevent unauthorized people from viewing the content.
When to use S/MIME to Encrypt E-mail: Like IRM, you should use S/MIME to encrypt if you want to control who can access your e-mail content, but you also want to force the recipients to enter a password to further validate their credentials. S/MIME is more appropriate than IRM for most external e-mail scenarios, due to its foundation on industry standards.

It is important to realize that S/MIME and IRM result in an increase to the size of the e-mail you are sending. Please review the table included in this section to see samples of the size changes when using the different options for securing your email communications.

TYPE	NORMAL	S/MIME	IRM
RTF 1 Line	3 K	7 K	12 K
RTF 1 Page	4 K	15 K	15 K

NOTE:  It is not recommended that you use S/MIME and/or IRM on all e-mail by default. Instead, choose when to use these technologies where they make the most sense for your specific business e-mail needs.

IRM is an exciting feature in Office 2003 that allows you to control the distribution and usage of documents and e-mail. IRM spans Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook and helps to meet the following scenarios:
Write an e-mail that can not be forwarded.
Collaborate on time-sensitive information that will become inaccessible after a certain time.
Create documents and e-mail marked “Company Confidential” that stay inside Company and are inaccessible to unauthorized users.

Using IRM on documents and e-mail means you can control their distribution and usage. This means that information marked “Do Not Forward” won’t be, unless the user is intentionally and maliciously trying to redistribute your content to others.
You should use IRM only on sensitive information. If you are writing a document or e-mail and think “I wish there was a way I could control where this information goes,” then IRM is appropriate. Note: Only users with Office 2003 or the RMA for Internet Explorer 6.0 will be able to view the IRM-protected material you send.

Key features of IRM include:
Do Not Forward E-mail: Create protected e-mail messages that prevent recipients from forwarding, printing, or copying information.
Document Permission: Create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that only designated users can read, preventing them from extracting your information and/or repurposing it without your permission.
Information Expiration: Specify how long your information is accessible. After the expiration date you set has passed, users will no longer be able to view the protected information.
Protect From Prying Eyes:IRM uses strong encryption to ensure that people without permission cannot get access.

To apply IRM permissions, click the circular red button located in each Office application toolbar.

Search Folders help users spend less time finding e-mail messages. Search Folders are live search results that look and act like folders, but differ from traditional e-mail folders in that e-mail is not saved in them. They are virtual folders that contain views of all e-mail items matching specific search criteria. Search Folders can be quickly set up with a number of pre-designed options, such as e-mail flagged “For Follow Up” or “Unread Mail.” You can also create your own custom Search Folders, defining specific search criteria that an e-mail must meet to be displayed in the folder.

Three Search Folders are created by default:
For Follow Up: This folder provides a virtual to-do list of all Quick Flagged messages.
Large Mail: This folder assists with mailbox cleanup by showing the largest e-mail messages from across the entire mailbox.
Unread Mail: All of a user’s unread e-mail messages on the server regardless of their folder, are shown in the Unread Mail search folder.

1) Under File, select New, Search Folder.
2) Select the type of Search Folder you want in the New Search Folder dialog.
3) Select Custom Search Folder.
4) Click OK and follow on-screen instructions.

By default a Search Folder will search through all of the folders in your entire Mailbox including sent and deleted items. To customize the search:
1) Right click on a Search Folder and select Customize this Search Folder.
2) Click the Browse button. The Select Folder(s) dialog will appear.
3) Click the Clear All button.
4) Select the folders to be searched and click OK.

Outlook 2003 makes it possible to view multiple calendars side-by-side in the Outlook window including local, public folder, other users’ calendars. The calendars scroll together and are color-coded, making them useful for comparing schedules. Users can drag appointments between calendars or onto their own calendar or use the New Meeting With feature to quickly set up a meeting with the owners of some or all of the open calendars. Note: This feature requires network connectivity. This feature is not available while working Offline.

When you click on the Open Shared Calendar hyperlink, a dialog appears to specify which contact’s calendar you would like to open. Selected calendars will be listed along side of your calendar. This gives a great “at a glance” view of schedules. This feature requires viewing permissions to be set on each calendar you wish to view. Users can view calendars side-by-side by clicking the checkbox next to the calendar name. To open another user’s calendar, Click Open a Shared Calendar. To share your calendar with others, click Share My Calendar and assign permissions.

Through a study of Outlook users, Microsoft found that most people do one of three things with nearly every mail message:
- They respond to it immediately
- They delete or file it immediately
- They decide to follow-up on it later

There are almost as many approaches to No. 3 as there are users: Mark the message as unread, move it to a mail folder called To Do, make a task out of it, rigorously delete or file all messages that don’t require a response, etc. Each one of these is inefficient and takes a lot of extra time, even though each strategy may work for a particular user.
Quick Flags are designed to solve this problem. Activated by a single click, Quick Flags are very simple to use. Users single-click the flag icon next to any e-mail message in any folder in Outlook, to mark it with one of the six Quick Flag options and move on with what they were doing, minimizing the disruption of managing e-mail. Each marked message gets a brightly colored flag next to it so that it is easy to find again.

With Microsoft Office 2003, faxing content that you have on your computer is now as easy as sending an e-mail message.

Here are the steps to send a fax with any Office application, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint:
1. Click on the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Recipient using Internet Fax Service.
2. Complete the Fax Recipient, Fax Number (for international faxing, do not enter leading zeros before a city code), and Subject fields. 3. From the Fax Service pane on the right, choose from the cover sheet options available, and then complete your cover sheet located in the body of your e-mail message.
4. The fax document will be an attachment. Additional documents can be added by either clicking on the Attach… field or by clicking on the paper clip icon from the Toolbar. Click Send.

Faxing from Outlook is very similar:
1. Open a blank e-mail
2. From the File menu choose Send To and then Recipient using Internet Fax Service…
3. The Fax Service pane will appear on the right and the send fields will change to picture shown in step two above.

The body of the e-mail is the cover page and attachments can be added as in step four above.

Custom Outlook rules save time and makes e-mail organization much simpler by automatically performing many actions based on the criteria you establish.

1. Click on the Inbox folder.
2. Select Rules and Alerts... from the Tools menu.
3. Click on New Rule… to launch the Rules Wizard.
  • If you want to use a template with pre-specified actions and conditions, Click Start creating a rule from a template.
  • If you want to use custom conditions and actions, Click Start from a blank rule.
4. Follow the instructions in the Rules Wizard.
5. If you want to run the newly created rule on messages already in the Inbox, select the Run this rule now on messages already in Inbox check box on the last page of the Rules Wizard.
6. (Optional) If you have more than one email account or Inbox you can have this rule apply to all of them, select the “Create this rule on all accounts” check box on the last page of the Rules Wizard.