Accessing MS Outlook from home

Our NPO uses MS outlook 2003 for Email purposes. Is there a way to access Outlook from a different computer.

Manny

Find out if your organization runs Microsoft Exchange and Outlook Web Access - If they do, you can access your email from any computer anywhere providing it has an internet connection.

Don 

Or you can always use www.logmein.com  Great free version available if you don't want to buy.

Tim

We dont run MS Exchange. We use MS Outlook, POP set up. Is it difficult to run / set up MS Exchange?

MS Exchange is a bear to install if you aren't experienced at setting it up.  If you went the Exchange route I would recommend having a consultant install it for you. 

Thank you all for your replies

Manny

manuel77:

We dont run MS Exchange. We use MS Outlook, POP set up. Is it difficult to run / set up MS Exchange?

Hi Manny - By this I assume your ISP manages your email accounts for you - Most ISP's provide a form of email called IMAP - This allows email messages to be kept on your ISP's mail server so you can connect to your mail from multiple computers without the hassle of messages only being delivered to one computer ... ask them about this... they may already be providing the service you want and it's just a matter of configuring it so you can setup multiple Outlook clients.  

PS - Failing this, it's likely your ISP provides webmail on your email accounts meaning you can always connect to your mail from any computer with a web browser.

The only problem with that, don, is that many web providers don't give you much mailbox space, even if they offer IMAP. 

Exchange is a bit of a headache to manage if you're a small shop without Exchange experience.

Take a look at Google Apps - free for NPOs if you want something easier to manage.

shipley.c:

The only problem with that, don, is that many web providers don't give you much mailbox space

Possibly, although many ISP's give quite sizable mailbox space, and the space required is itself of course relative to the number of messages the org sends and receives and any in-house email archive regimes - hence my suggestion that a prudent  approach at this point in time would be to contact the orgs ISP and find out just what is available. Without this it's all just conjecture.

Cheers, Don

If you are using Outlook with POP3 email, it is simple and easy to access it from another computer.

Just set up the second computer with the same account information and it will access the email just like the first one.

BUT, if you are downloading your mail from the POP3 account, it will no longer be accessable by the second computer, so you need to take this into consideration.

What you can do (for example) is to set up one or both of the computers to NOT delete email from the server. Here is a common situation: You have Outlook email at work, but want to be able to access it from home sometimes, mostly to check it on your day off or if you are working from home. In this case you set up Outlook on your home computer, but tell it to NOT delete email. This way, you can send and received email at home via your work account, but you can still download the mail when you return to work.

The only thing I don't like about this option is that you lose, by nature of POP3, the indicators of which emails have already been read and replied to.  You also now have 2 Sent Items folders you need to consider when checking wether or not your sent that email you expected someone to reply to.

You could check to see if your ISP supports web mail.  When we had POP mail, our ISP let us log in via their website.