E-mail accounts at work

Exchange is designed for medium and large organizations and runs on one or more servers. You will commonly find this type of account in a medium or large organization, or in a large school environment
With an Exchange account, each user has a mailbox (mailbox: Location on a Microsoft Exchange server where your e-mail is delivered. Your administrator sets up a mailbox for each user. If you designate a personal folder file as your e-mail delivery location, messages are routed to it from your mailbox.) on the server running Exchange. When you receive a new e-mail message, it is deposited in your mailbox. Outlook enables you to view and work with your messages by connecting to Exchange.
If you use an Exchange account, typically your e-mail messages, calendar, contacts, and other items are delivered to and stored in your mailbox on the server. When you install Outlook on a new computer and add your Exchange account information, all your items on the server are available to you from this computer as well.
Exchange accounts also allow you to work offline or use Cached Exchange Mode. For this purpose, local copies of your items are kept on your computer in an Offline Folder file (.ost) (Offline Folder file:” The file on your hard disk that contains offline folders. The offline folder file has an .ost extension. You can create it automatically when you set up Outlook or when you first make a folder available offline.).” The .ost file is regularly synchronized with the items on the server running Exchange when connected. Because your data remains on the server running Exchange, you can recreate this .ost file on a new computer without having to back up the .ost file.

To determine if you are using Cached Exchange Mode, do the following:

1. On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.
The Account Settings command is on the Tools menu in Office Outlook 2007. If you are using an earlier version of Outlook, the following instructions do not apply. Use the Help that is included with that product. If the title bar of the program that you are using displays Outlook Express, then you are using a program that is not the same as Outlook. See the Help in Outlook Express for assistance.
2. On the E-mail tab, click the Exchange account, and then click Change
3. Under Microsoft Exchange Server, if the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box is selected, Cached Exchange Mode is turned on.