Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Exchange other than I have no need for it, so I don't use it. Mine is strictly a one-computer home environment.

I am curious, though, about "being offline". Although I'm an old programmer, I'm still naive enough to think that anything you need to receive will wait until you go online and it will come streaming in.

I'm also confused about "going online every time I started Outlook". It may be just terminology, but don't you consider being online as being connected to the internet? If that's your meaning, I'm online practically all the time, but Outlook may be closed. When I open Outlook (and if I have the parameter set to do an automatic send/receive when I open) all the mail waiting for me comes tumbling down.