Group,

I've just installed Outlook 2003 on Vista and have all the latest patches
installed for both the OS and Office 2003.

I have not yet joined my company's AD domain but am trying to setup Outlook
2003 with my Exchange Server 2003 server. From my Vista laptop (over VPN), I
can access OWA. I can also go through the initial setup process for my
Exchange account without problems. The installation wizard finishes (after
prompting me for my Exchange server name, user name, then asking me for
domain credentials) and Outlook actually pulls a copy of my folders from the
Exchange Server and I see them in my local OST file. I have a Windows XP
(domain joined and also VPN'ed in) sitting right next to the Vista/Outlook
machine and all works great on the XP/O2K3 machine...

However, when I do a send/receive on the Vista machine and look at the
"Outlook Send/Receive Progress" dialog, it always shows that it is hung at
"Copying offline address book template file." It will never get beyond this
point (I've tried unsuccessfully dozens of times over the past week and have
let it try for up to 12 hours at a time ).

I've tried everything I can think of after working with Outlook/Exchange for
~10 years as a power end user and am unsure what to try next.

Does this have something to do with
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=841273 and the machine not being a member
of the AD domain, even though I've provided user credentials (successfully)
for the domain/exchange/outlook login process?

Is there any way to use cached mode w/o downloading the address book
template file? Is there a way to prepopulate this file from a working
XP/Outlook 2003 machine so that the process will bypass this dialogue that it
keeps hanging on? Are there any logs I can inspect to get greater
information on the error?

Any additional suggestions?

Thanks,

Steve