If you cancel the credentials dialog box, Outlook 2003 silently enters Offline mode, and you are not connected to your mailbox

Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 may prompt you repeatedly for a password. If you cancel the credentials dialog box, Outlook 2003 silently enters Offline mode, and you are not connected to your mailbox. In this case, you do not receive an error message or a notification.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

1. Apply hotfix 949917. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
   949917  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949917/ ) Description of the Outlook 2003 hotfix package: March 7, 2008
2. Set the UseWindowsUserCredentials registry entry. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
   2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\RPC
   3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
   4. Type UseWindowsUserCredentials, and then press ENTER.
   5. Right-click UseWindowsUserCredentials, and then click Modify.
   6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   7. Exit Registry Editor.

Note When you set the UseWindowsUserCredentials value to 1, only your desktop credentials are used. The following scenarios may help you determine the value that you want to use.