So I have been using Office 2007 beta 2 now for a week or so and at the moment it is a pretty mixed bag. There is some really promising stuff in here, but at the moment I am finding my main app ( Outlook ) just a little too broken for comfort, and I am having difficulty finding solutions to a couple of show stoppers…

The main issue seems to me to yet again centre around “cached mode”. Being a regular VPN user cached mode is something of a god send and makes Outlook performance through a slow link appear pretty comparable to direct network connection. From what I have determined so far though it is not really possible to use Outlook 2007 with it switched on ( at least for me anyway ).

With cached mode switched on any entries I make in my calendar, tasks or contacts folders only appear for a brief moment before they automatically disappear ! Emails are received ok and dont suffer this auto-delete bug. Interestingly if I make an appointment on my Blackberry that appears to not suffer the same problem.

If I switch cached mode off calendar and contacts now work ok, but for some reason my tasks folder does not display !!

I have logged a couple of questions in Microsoft’s news groups but so far the only reply has been from someone with the same problem. Anyone who has a clue how to workaround this please let me know so I can continue with eval of Office 2007. If I cant find a fix soon I will have to revert to Outlook 2003 until these showstopppers are resolved.

Appointments disappear in Outlook 2007 cached mode
Tasks folder not visible in Outlook 2007 if cached mode off