How to change the Cancel Request dialog box behavior in Outlook

In Microsoft Outlook, a feature notifies users that the connection to the Microsoft Exchange Server computer is taking longer than expected because of network congestion or server availability. This connection can include connections to the user's mailbox, to a free and busy server, or to any other server with which Outlook may need to communicate to fulfill a request for information.

When such a delay occurs, the following Cancel Request dialog box is displayed:

You may want to disable this feature or to increase the time-out value if you experience frequent network congestion or other related issues.

To suppress the Cancel Request dialog box or to change the time-out value, you can manually edit the registry or use a policy to configure the setting.

How to manually edit the registry

You can manually edit the registry to suppress the Cancel Request dialog box or to change the time-out value for the dialog box.

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:

How to suppress the "Cancel Request" dialog box

To edit the registry to manually suppress the Cancel Request dialog box, follow these steps:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and then click the appropriate registry key, as appropriate for the method that was used to install Outlook and for the version of Outlook that you are running.
   If you used the Installation Wizard to install Outlook
   • Microsoft Outlook 2002:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Microsoft Office Outlook 2003:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Microsoft Office Outlook 2007:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   
   If you used the Custom Installation Wizard to install Outlook
   • Outlook 2002:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Outlook 2003:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Outlook 2007:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   
   
3. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
   Value name: Disable
   Data type: DWORD
   Value data: 1
4. Exit Registry Editor.

How to change the "Cancel Request" dialog box time-out value

You can manually specify the amount of time that Outlook waits for a connection to the server before the Cancel Request dialog box is displayed.

This policy setting overrides the Exchange service Seconds until server connection timeout setting, although it does not disable this setting in the user interface (UI).

To edit the registry to modify the policy setting, follow these steps:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and then click the appropriate registry key, as appropriate for the method that was used to install Outlook and for the version of Outlook that you are running.
   If you used the Installation Wizard to install Outlook
   • Outlook 2002:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Outlook 2003:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Outlook 2007:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   
   If you used the Custom Installation Wizard to install Outlook
   • Outlook 2002:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Outlook 2003:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   • Outlook 2007:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\CancelRPC
   
   
3. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value.
   
   Note In this example, the value is set to 50 seconds.
   Value name: TimeToShowCancelDialog
   Data type: DWORD
   Value data: 50000 (the amount of time in milliseconds)
   Note Type the connection delay that you want as a decimal number representing milliseconds.
4. Exit Registry Editor.

How to use policies to set the registry values

You can set the values that are described in the "How to manually edit the registry" section by using group policies. To do this, you can use either the System Policy Editor from the Microsoft Office Resource Kit (ORK) or the Group Policy Editor for Microsoft Windows 2000 and for Windows XP.

For more information about how to use the Microsoft Office 2002 Resource Kit System Policy Editor, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information about how to use group policies in a Windows XP environment, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For more information about how to use group policies in a Windows 2000 environment, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: