Sometimes, Outlook 2007 briefly looses its connection with the back end Exchange 2010 server. This happens despite a healthy network connection on the workstation. If this occurs, there are two ways to get around the issue temporarily.
Enter your fully qualified domain username and password
In the password dialog that has so rudely interrupted your workflow, enter your fully qualified username and password into the fields provided. A fully qualified username is one that also includes the domain name that the user is associated with. For example, if my username is stupendous and my domain is marbles.local, the the fully qualified username is as follow. Note the back slash.
marbles.local\stupendous
Putting this into our context, my fully qualified username for the Heritage network is as follows. Again, note the back slash.
heritagecollege.local\rshouldice
Next, enter your Heritage account password into the password field.
It's also wise to check the Save Password checkbox so your updated credentials are cached by Outlook.
Then hit OK.
Close Outlook and reopen it
This is as straight forward as it sounds. Just close Outlook and reopen it. It will use cached credentials based on your most recent Windows login to re-authenticate with the Exchange server.
If that doesn’t work
In the event that neither of those things work, logging off and logging back into Windows will force all of your credentials to be re-cached.
The dropped connection is characterized by a message in the bottom right corner of Outlook. It will say something like:
- Password Needed, or
- Offline with Microsoft Exchange.
A successful connection message will read:
- Connected to Microsoft Exchange.
- Online with Microsoft Exchange.
So, make note of the message that shows up in that location.