If the user clicks Cancel, you should get an error, which you'll need to handle, when you try to create an email message. If the user chooses Offline, your code will be able to create and send email messages, but they won't be transmitted to the server until the user synchronizes with the server from the offline session or restarts Outlook in an online session.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.turtleflock.com/olconfig/index.htm
and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx

"Nigel RS" wrote in message ...
Hi Sue
That fixed it. I also added a error handler that detects if the attempt to
create an email fails which works great.

Another question: when I attempt to create the email in an off-line
situation the dialog Exchange Server is offline with the option Retry,
Offline or Cancel opens. I presume this is an outlook dialog? If it is can
and how do I interact with this - e.g. user presses Cancel or create Offline
etc from within Excel?.

"Nigel RS" wrote:

Hi Sue
Since I created the thread I discovered that I cannot open outlook manually
when off-line, but other PC uses of the network can. I will try it on one
that can open outlook and get my pc reconfigured if that works

Thanks
Nigel RS

"Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

When you're not connected, can you open Outlook manually? If not, then maybe you need to change your Outlook configuration so you can work offline.

"Nigel RS" wrote in message news I have a laptop PC that connects to a microsoft exchange server via a VPN.
When connected I can attach files from the laptop pc to an email using VBA in
Excel. All works OK.
If I operate the PC without VPN conection my file attachment program fails
with unable to access datastore error.

Is this an outlook error as it cannot create an email item ?