How to use Outlook’s cached download modes

Posted on January 21, 2009 at 7:53 am

I use a POP3 Outlook account. This allows me to retrieve incoming mails if I am connected and also lets me view and manipulate the retrieved messages even if I am disconnected. You will not be able to do that on a non-POP3 account like Yahoo! Email. The downside of this setup is that I can’t retrieve my emails online once I downloaded them to my Outlook client.

Incoming POP3 emails could hog your line during incoming email downloads. For me that will be 8am when I get in to my office and log in to Outlook. That will be a couple of megabytes of incoming files to download in my local inbox (folks here love huge attachments!) so the tendency is that I will not be able to browse the Internet as fast as when my Outlook is not downloading files. If your connection is slow enough (like my home dial up), it could also prevent you from logging in to a messenger service like Yahoo! Messenger.

So what are our options using Outlook as an email client? There is what they call “Cached Exchanged Mode” where you can choose from four different download modes. To get to the modes, click “File” on the main menu then “Cached Exchange Mode”:

Now there are four options which you can choose from:

Download Full Items will download everything once you get connected. If your first email is a huge spam mail that takes a few MB of space, you will need to wait a relatively longer time before you see the other emails on the incoming folder. This is not ideal for folks who anticipate important emails that needs to be acted on ASAP.
Download Headers and then Full Items will let you see the subject headers first before it downloads the body and attachments of the emails. This doesn’t have the limitation of the first mode since it will let you see the subject headers first.
Download Headers will let you download headers only so this means you will need to click the body of the email to be able to download the whole thing. It saves you bandwidth but it is troublesome since you will need to download the body of all the emails that you deem worth reading. This works like a regular web-based email client. You wont be able to read the whole email until you open it.
On Slow Connections Download only Headers is the best choice for slow connections like dial-up. It automatically detects your Internet speed so it wont eat up a lot of your line. If you switch from a fast connection to slow connection regularly and still want to have Outlook connection, maybe this is the best mode for you.

It depends on your Internet connection and amount of incoming emails. If you have a slow connection but gets a lot of emails that needs to be sorted ASAP, option 3 is the best choice. If you receive few emails and you have a slow connection, option 2 will be great since you wont have to download the individual body of each of the emails.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

» Filed Under MS Office Tips

Comments

2 Responses to “How to use Outlook’s cached download modes”

Eskil said on : January 27th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

This sounds really useful. I have changed my settings to mode 4, now all I have to do is to wait until I get home to my slow connection to see if it works.

How to use Outlook’s cached download modes | All PC TIPS Says:

[...] For me that will be 8am when I get in to my office and log in to Outlook. That will be a couple of megabytes of incoming files to download in my local inbox (folks here love huge attachments!) so [...]
January 28th, 2009 at 4:13 am