Working offline

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Working offline

Offline Files notifies you if the status of your network connection changes. When the status of your network connection changes, an Offline Files icon appears in the notification area and a reminder balloon appears over the notification area to notify you of the change. If the reminder balloon notifies you that you are offline, you can continue to work with your files as you normally do, or you can click the Offline Files icon in the notification area for more information about the status of your connection.

If you are working offline (either because you are disconnected from the network or because you undocked your portable computer), you can still browse network drives and shared folders in My Computer or My Network Places. A red X appears over any disconnected network drives. You will be able to see only those files that you made available offline and any files that you created after the network connection was lost. For more information about making a file or folder available offline, see Make a file or folder available offline.

Your permissions on the network files and folders remain the same whether you are connected to the network or working offline. For example, a read-only document on a mapped network drive would remain read-only if you were disconnected from the network.

When you are disconnected from the network, you can print to local printers, but you cannot print to shared printers on the network.

After you reconnect to the network, Synchronization Manager updates the network files with changes that you made while working offline. For more information about synchronizing files with Synchronization Manager, see Synchronizing offline items.