Here’s an AppleScript to deal with Outlook getting itchy if there’s email in the outbox and no Internet connection to send it over. Sucks to have your battery die on a plane over something stupid like that.

-- if I can't get the Internet, and Outlook wants to send email, then it behaves badly.
-- since I'm usually on battery in those conditions, this is not good and must be stopped.
-- of course this is a rare condition, so this script needs to be light on CPU too.

-- is Outlook even running?
tell application "System Events"
 set outlook_running to (name of processes) contains "Microsoft Outlook"
end tell
if (outlook_running) then
 -- do I have a network address?
 set ipaddr to IPv4 address of (get system info)
 if (ipaddr is not "127.0.0.1") then
  -- Am I really on the Internet (evil gateways don't count)
  set is_splunk to (do shell script "curl -s -I www.splunk.com | grep -c splunk")
  if (is_splunk > 0) then
   -- it's safe to work online now
   tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
    set working offline to "false"
    return ((current date) & "Set Outlook to work online.")
   end tell
  end if
 else
  -- if Outlook is running but I don't have an address or I'm not really on the Internet, it might be a good idea to work offline. 
  -- Commented out the bits that think about that decision.
  --if (is_splunk < 1) then
  -- tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
  --  set outbox_count to count every message of mail folder "Outbox"
  -- end tell
  -- if (outbox_count is greater than 0) then
  --  tell application "System Events"
  --   try
  --    set The_app to "Microsoft Outlook"
  --    set pid to the unix id of process The_app as Unicode text
  --    set cpu to (do shell script "ps -o %cpu -p " & quoted form of pid & "| tail -n 1")
  --   end try
  --  end tell
  --  
  --  if (cpu is greater than 50) then
  tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
   set working offline to true
   return ((current date) & "Set Outlook to work offline.")
  end tell
  --  end if
  -- end if
  --end if
 end if
end if