One of the more useful features in the next SharePoint is the ability to take data with you offline. So many times in the past I had to meet with a client in their office so the day before I would download all my documents stored in SharePoint one by one. What a pain! Now with MOSS 2007, I can do it all in one click!

Extranet access is one possible way to avoid the need to download local copies, but you still have the problem of needing an internet connection. Being at the client site, sometimes IT security makes it a big pain to get internet access (ie. have to get permission, need to authorize the machine, dynamic or static ip, WEP/WPA key, ...). There are so many other things you have to worry about, why deal with another issue?

So how do you do it? Very easy! Just go to the document library you want to access offline, click the Actions menu and click Connect to Outlook:

Outlook then will ask you whether you want to connect to the list or not. The first time I tried this I wasn't prompted with the dialog, while the second time I saw this screen:

Once you confirm OK, Outlook will create a new SharePoint Lists folder and download the documents to that folder.



What happens when you update your document library with new documents? Outlook will detect the new documents once you refresh the folder, but will not automatically download them.

You can selectively download individual files you want or hit the Send/Receive button to download all the documents. Unfortunately Send/Receive button did not work reliably for me: sometimes it would work, other times nothing would happen. Hopefully this is just a Beta 2 bug.

So what can be linked for offline Outlook access? A quick review of all the lists and documents on my personal site, I found these linkable to Outlook:

  • Calendars
  • Contacts
  • Data Connection Libraries
  • Discussions
  • Document Libraries
  • Form Libraries
  • Picture Libraries
  • Project Tasks
  • Tasks
  • Wiki Pages

These items can also be linked for offline access, but they go through Access instead of Outlook:

  • Announcements
  • Issue Tracking
  • Links
  • Lists
  • Surveys

That's quite a list of data you can suck on your laptop before a client meeting!