Switching between Outlook laptop and desktop clients

If you need to support a Microsoft CRM environment where both the desktop (online) and laptop version of the Outlook client are being used, here’s a quick way to switch your own workstation to use a different client mode. Assuming of course that you already have the local SQL database on your machine.

• Open Regedit
• Locate the registry branch HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSCRMClient
• Set the LightClient registry key to either 00000001 (desktop) or 00000000 (laptop)

There’s another key right next to it, which tells the current status of the client:

• RCOffline = 00000001 equals offline mode
• RCOffline = 00000000 equals offline mode

That registry key may come in handy if your “Go Offline” / “Go Online” buttons in the Outlook UI get mixed (which is what they sometimes do!) and you need to determine the real status of the client.