In my day job (yeah.. this Paperclip can’t live off giving you Office 2007 help yet!) I always got frustrated when I tried to check my corporate email from home or on the road.  My office is essentially my laptop, and wether I am on my ADSL connection at home, or on my 3G Wireless connection, whenever I wanted to check my email using Outlook, for security reasons (I am guessing) I needed to connect to work through a Virtual Private Network (VPN).  Very annoying!

But then I discovered a great way to get around that!  It is called "Outlook Anywhere" and is probably the hardest option to find and change in Outlook 2007!

For those interested in the details (from a popup box in Outlook 2007)… "Microsoft Office Outlook can communicate with Microsoft Exchange over the Internet by nesting Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) within HTTP packets." 

Woooo too technical for me… but what that basically means is that you don’t need a VPN connection, you just need access to the internet!  How good is that.

Here is how to do it.

1. Click on "Tools", then "Options"
2. Click on the "Mail Setup" Tab
3. Click on the "E-mail Accounts…" button
4. On the "Email" tab, click on your email account, and then click "Change"
5. Click on "More Settings"
6. Click on the "Connection" tab
7. In the "Outlook Anywhere" section, check the box that says "Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP"
8. Click on "Exchange Proxy Settings…"
9. Type your companies "Outlook Web Access" address in the "Connection Settings" box.  For example, it could be owa.companyname.com
10. Click "OK" about 15 times to close all the windows
11. Restart Outlook

And there you go – probably the most complicated menu structure in Outlook 2007, but when you find it, it is absolute GOLD!

Now go out and enjoy that extra 30 seconds I have given you every time you want to check your email!

’till next time!
TNP