How to make Outlook and Web Based Email play nice together.

(In this article, I say Outlook but Outlook Express works the same way. Also, substitute your actual domain name for YOURDOMAIN.COM.)

When you open Outlook/Outlook Express, any email in your mailbox is removed from your mailbox and put into Outlook and will no longer be available to Web Based Email (WBE).

Perhaps it would help to think of your email like your postal mail at your home.  When you get home this evening, and before going inside, you might open your postal mailbox and see you have mail.  If you take all the mail out of your mailbox, your mailbox is now empty.  When you go into your home, you might drop all your mail into a box labeled INBOX.  If you go back outside to check your mailbox again, there’s nothing in it because you already picked up your mail.  (Presumably no one has put anything in your mail since you last checked.)

 Basically, this is the default behavior of Outlook for receiving email: 

1. Outlook checks your YOURDOMAIN.COM mailbox for you once when you start the program, every 5 minutes or so, and once when you close the program. 
2. If Outlook finds any email, Outlook copies the email into the INBOX on your computer.
3. Then the email is removed (erased) from the YOURDOMAIN.COM mailbox to make room for more email. 

Once Outlook does this, the email is only available to you when you are using Outlook on your computer. 

WBE doesn’t download the email to your computer.  WBE allows you to [view, read, reply to, delete] the email while it is still in the YOURDOMAIN.COM mailbox, and before Outlook touches it.   And as long as you don’t delete an email message, the email message will still be found by Outlook.  When Outlook is running, Outlook will copy it to your home computer INBOX and then delete it for you. 

Outlook can be told to NOT remove the email after it is copied.  This allows you to use WBE to open the original email “on the road” even if you have opened the email on your computer at home.  I have step-by-step instructions for how to configure this HERE.  NOTE:  If you are using Outlook Express, the steps are different but similar.

Remember if you make this change, it’s a good idea to also select the setting “Remove from server when deleted from ‘Deleted Items’”.  Otherwise, your YOURDOMAIN.COM mailbox might become filled to capacity.  If that happens, you will not be able to receive any more email until you clean the YOURDOMAIN.COM mailbox out.

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