Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server integrate with Microsoft Office 2003 well and with Microsoft Office 2007 extremely well. The primary application for SharePoint-Office integration is Microsoft Outlook. In Outlook 2003 you can synchronize unidirectional information to the Outlook client from SharePoint contacts lists and events/calendars. In Outlook 2007 you can take many elements of your SharePoint content “offline” and synchronize it back to the site when you reconnect to the Internet. Synchronization in Outlook 2007 is bi-directional allowing you to update changes made offline to specific lists – this is a huge improvement. Support for taking documents offline is uni-directional.
Other Office applications such as Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Visio and OneNote also provide significant integration with the SharePoint platform.
Watch a Tutorial about SharePoint off-line
In this SharePoint screencast tutorial howto you will learn how to take contacts off-line with Outlook.