Continue working if you lose or unplug your network connection

If you are using a program that is installed on your computer, you shouldn't experience any change if you lose your network connection. You can continue working on files in that program and save them as you normally do. If you are using a program that is installed on a server and is running over your corporate network, you should be able to save the file you are working on to a location on your hard disk and then resume working in the program when network access is restored.

If you are working on a file stored in a shared folder on your corporate network, that file and folder will not be available if you lose your network connection. If you have a file open when you are disconnected, you might be prompted to save a copy of the file to a location on your hard disk. Then you can continue working on the file, and you can update the copy in the shared folder once you can connect to the network again. If you frequently access shared folders, consider setting up your computer to use offline files. That way, you can use shared network files and programs even when you aren't connected to the network. For more information, search for "offline files" in Help and Support.

Note

Offline files are not included with Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium.

Ask your network administrator about your company's policy before setting up offline files.

In many e‑mail programs, such as Windows Mail, you can compose new messages, read downloaded messages, and make changes to your e‑mail folders while you are offline. Once you regain network access, the program sends any new messages you wrote (which are stored in your outbox while you are offline), and delivers to your inbox any e‑mail that was sent to you while you were offline. You can set some e‑mail programs to automatically go to an offline state when you lose network connectivity and then go back online once connectivity is restored. Some programs prompt you to work offline when you lose network access, and then you have to manually set the program back to an online state once you are back online.

Ask your network administrator for information about setting up offline access to your e‑mail and about your company's e‑mail policy.

If you want to read web content offline, you can do it two ways:

• Subscribe to an RSS feed. Many websites offer content as feeds, which can be downloaded and read offline. For more information on feeds, see Using feeds (RSS).

• Save a webpage as a web archive (MHT) or HTML file. For more information, see Save a webpage as a file.

Many web browsers also keep a record (or "history") of the webpages you visit. Depending on your web browser settings, you can view webpages that you viewed a few days ago or a few minutes ago. Storing a webpage in your history guarantees access to that page when you don't have Internet access.

Note

Webpages in a history are stored on your computer and therefore take up hard disk space. Many web browsers provide a way to remove the webpages from your computer or clear your history at any time, and also to automatically clear the history for you regularly.

Ask your network administrator about your company's policy on viewing webpages and saving copies of webpages on your computer.