Microsoft Outlook Stuck in Offline Mode

Here’s a quick tip for users of Microsoft Outlook – perhaps the e-mail client of choice in most corporations these days.

On rare occasions you might find Outlook stuck in offline mode and you may find that you are unable to get it back online and receiving mail. Even after restarting Outlook and having an active network connection does nothing to help. Even more infuriating is that you may find that the “work offline” button is greyed out.

So, what do you do?

In some cases, this problem can be caused by your Exchange account not being in “cached mode” but it is easy enough to enable as follows:

1. Press the Window key on the keyboard,
2. Type in Mail and press Enter,
   1. On Windows 8 you will need to select Settings on the right side of the Start Screen,
3. Click the E-mail Accounts button,
4. Double click your Exchange account,
5. Tick “Use Cached Exchange Mode”
   1. For Outlook 2013 you may need to click the More Settings button then the Advanced tab to enable this option,
6. Click Close.

You may need to close and reopen Outlook once you’ve done this but you should be able to coax it out of offline mode and get on with your e-mail activities.