Saturday, May 05, 2007 5:29 PM

Hi,

You MUST be the owner of the mailbox to open the OOF assistant so that means that you must be logged using the user's domain account.

Creating just the profile on a machine that has no joined your domain or using a domain account that is not the owner of the mailbox will not work.

You can ALWAYS enable/disable the OOF from OWA.

Regards.

Proposed As Answer by sdhand Friday, January 08, 2010 3:19 AM

Monday, May 07, 2007 1:21 AM

0

I was able to turn it off via OWA...however now the only way she can put herself OUT/IN the office she has to OWA. I had her log into multiple PCs to make sure that it wasn't her PC and she gets the same error. Deleted her OUTLOOK profile...nothing :-(

Monday, May 07, 2007 5:42 PM

0

I had the same problem with a mailbox migrated from exchange 2000 to ex2k7. I fear I will have to exmerge the 4GB of email out, delete the mailbox, recreate the mailbox and exmerge the email back in. Hopefully microsoft has an explanation/fix for this since using OWA to solely manage out of office is not the intended design.

-Norm

Monday, May 07, 2007 6:59 PM

0

I have the same problem on a mailbox migrated from ex2k to ex2k7. I fear I'll have to export the email from exchange with outlook, delete the mailbox, re-create the mailbox, and re-import all the email. Hopefully there is an easier way.

-Norm

Monday, May 07, 2007 7:00 PM

0

what is wrong with these forums?

Monday, May 07, 2007 10:00 PM

0

I hope that's not the only answer. I now have two users

Thursday, June 14, 2007 2:04 PM

0

We are running into this as well. i found this online:

When attempting to set Out of Office Settings using Outlook 2007, the following message appears: "Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later."

Status:	Active; No resolution pending
Last Updated:	5/1/2007
More Information:
This problem occurs for users who login to their PCs using a child domain account and use Outlook 2007 (Outlook 2003 does not exhibit the same problem) as their e-mail client. As a result of this issue with Outlook 2007 and the inclusion of additional settings not available in Outlook 2003, we recommend that users utilize the tools available from Outlook Web Access (OWA) to set out of office settings in all instances. The out of office settings are available in OWA by clicking Options > Out of Office Assistant. This issue is also mentioned in the FAQs section of this site.

The users affected here are using Outlook 2007 only. so we believe it's something between the E2K7 and Outlook 2K7.

has anyone had any more luck with this??

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 3:47 PM

0

Where did you find this information? Did it come from Microsoft?

We are having the same issue -- can't use the Out of Office settings directly from Outlook but they work from OWA. We have a brand-new install of Exchange 2007 (never used Exchange before) and Outlook 2007.

Thursday, June 21, 2007 1:34 PM

0

I pulled this from Google. i havent found anything on the MSFT site yet...

Monday, June 25, 2007 10:51 AM

0

Try running the clean rules switch, cleaning all the rules you have on that computer.

If there are no rules running on that computer make a rule then run the clean rule switch and then try the Out of Office assistant again.

The reason you are running the clean rule switch is because someone might be setup as a delegate on that computer so if they are that's whats keeping the Out of Office assistant from working. Let me know if this works.

Monday, June 25, 2007 3:24 PM

0

Rod ,

I tried the /cleanrules process but still get the same message. I created a new rule then used the /cleanrules command. The rule was gone but still get the OOA error when trying to use it.

Keith

Thursday, June 28, 2007 2:46 PM

0

At my site we are having similar errors. We also just updated from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. Only a handful of users are working in Outlook 2007 so far, 95% are still on Outlook 2003 and thus far all our problems with Out of Office assistant have been on machines with the Outlook 2003 client. However, we are not getting errors when turning on, we are getting two messages sent. One will be the last message that the Outlook client sent prior to the migration and the other will be the newly configured out of office message. We also have been unable to fix the issue without using OWA. We have not attempted any outlook profile removal/recreation yet. Nor have we used any of the Outlook startup switches, but clean rules seems like a likely choice. However, I KNOW none of our problem users have had delegates yet. If anyone comes up with solid documentation on the migration to Exchange 2k7 and OOF problems it would be nice to have here. I suspect it is something in the Outlook cache on the local client - not in the profile. I make this comment b/c OOF assistant in Outlook remembers your last message. Does anyone know if this is contained in the outlook.nk2 file in ...documents and settings\user profile\application data\microsoft\outlook (XP) or ...Users\user profile\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook (Vista)? This is the file that stores frequently used email addresses in cache for the user to select from the pop-up menu in Outlook. Just a thought. Or is it as a co-worker suggests something in the mailbox itself in Exchange. I will try to test it and see.

Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:10 PM

0

I have the same problem Only Outlook 2007 users cannot open OOF.

I to onl;y have a hand full of users on outlook 2007

and 90% on 2003

and 5% on 2002.

and only outlook 2007 users can not access OOF thru outlook.

Monday, July 16, 2007 8:27 PM

0

I managed to fix my OOF by updating exchange 2007 Autodiscover settings.

I had it pointing to the "default web site" which on my environments is incorrect.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996324.aspx

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 7:21 AM

0

Outlook 2007 must be able to locate the autodiscover service on Exchange 2007 server in order to have OOF and some other calendaring stuff work correctly.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 9:32 PM

0

Hi,

As a few have stated you need to get the autodiscovery service to function properly.

The best to try this is to hold down the ctrl key and click the Outlook icon in the activity bar (bottom right) and select "Test Email AutoConfiguration..."

In the log pane you should see some hints on why it doesn't work. Could be as simple as a missing DNS entry in the local DNS.

What I have seen is when antivirus software scans the inetsrv folder (%Systemroot%\system32) the metbase can easily be corrupted and you need to recreate the autodiscovery virtual site (after disabling scanning that is).

Syntax (you need to specify details) for doing this is:

Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory

New-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory

Hope it helps!

Saturday, July 21, 2007 1:47 AM

0

Previous poster mentioned problem with duplicate OOF messages being sent out when set via Outlook 2003 on an Exchange 2007 environment. We are having the exact same problem, with the only resolution being these users must set their OOF via OWA. This has become extremely frustrating, especially since that means an assistant needs a user's password to set via OWA as opposed to using Outlook 2003 w/ full mailbox rights and setting OOF.

I of course tried the auto-discover reinstall (Actually by removing the CAS and then adding) and verified Autodiscovery is working with the Test-OutlookWebServices powershell, but still the same OOF problems. It really looks like the internal/external OOF features for 2007 are the culprit and I have no way to fix at this point.

I see this problem from others on various other forums, but have yet to find a resolution. If anyone has any advice that would be great!

Thursday, August 02, 2007 9:59 PM

0

I just got off the phone with Microsoft having the same problem with Outlook 2007 Out of Office assitant. I too was having the message "Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later."

Here is the resolution that fixed the problem for me:

1. Test E-mail Autoconfiguration shows the OOF URL but could not access the OOF URL from IE.

2. Removed the anonymous authentication and configure integrated and basic authentication for EWS directory in IIS on Exchange 2007 server.

3. Stopped and started IIS.

Proposed As Answer by Tom Andrews Friday, March 20, 2009 10:47 AM
Marked As Answer by Wang HuangMicrosoft Contingent Staff, Administrator Monday, October 22, 2012 5:23 PM

Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:40 PM

0

When outlook 2007 wants to set OOF, it communicates with 'Exchange Web Servises' (EWS) virtual firectory in IIS. Outlook 2007 does not know path to EWS virtual directory in IIS so i queries the autodiscover service on Exchange 2007 server.

Therefore the autodiscovery service must be correctly configured when using Outlook 2007.

Outlook 2007 "finds" autodiscover service either by query AD or DNS.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124251.aspx

Proposed As Answer by Tom Andrews Friday, March 20, 2009 10:46 AM

Thursday, August 30, 2007 9:50 PM

0

i have started having this problem with two of my users. we have a fresh 2007 ex std deployment. most users are using Outlook 2003 (including the two in question)

first the problem was two DIFFERENT OOF emails that were being sent: the current one and one that was stuck from the past (basically a previous message that somehow got stuck in the system)

following this post

http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2003/10/when_oof_doesnt.html

i was able to get the users to at least sent the correct OOF email out even though it is still sent out twice.

if anybody can shed some light on how to fix this i would appreciate it.

the tool gives you a TON of info as well as functions, but a lot of it is very cryptic.

ps: ALSO look up MFCMAPI. seems like it is a similat tool but maybe a bit better

Monday, September 10, 2007 7:11 PM

0

In my limited testing, it appears Exchange 2007 OOF has 2 different configurable messages. Internal (within ones organization) and external (outside the organization). Using an older client (outlook 2003 or older) the Outlook cannot display the necessary wizard to allow you to modify both messages so as such when you create an OOF in Outlook (older than 2007) the server then gets confused and takes a previous OOF message as one and the currently configured OOF message as another and before you know it, users are getting 2 OOF messages of different times.

At this point in my organization we have told users to set OOF via OWA.

Friday, October 12, 2007 8:50 AM

0

Thanks Lasse, your guidance works 100%. Using the "Test Email AutoConfiguration" - I found outlook was trying to connect externaly (via our Internet Proxy). We fixed it by modifying IE settings, which can be done manually or as in our case by modifying Group Policy to bypass the proxy server for our Exchange Server. We also added a DNS Alias record (CNAME) to autodiscover.domain.com ("domain.com" being a placeholder for our own domain ofcourse) which points to our Exchange 2k7 Server just for good measure. Thanks a mil!

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 5:15 PM

0

HI,

i had about 10 users with OOF stuck on after migrating to ex07 from 2003 - - THIS IS THE FIX FOR OUT OF OFFICE STUCK ON.

MS added a legacy layer in to which older OOF would be migrated and if you accessed through outlook 2k3 or below it would be used

if you had previously had an OOreply set - but had since deleted it - it recorded null string which the upgrade script to 2k7 replaced with null - which is pants its an exchange bug ! (They should have a catch on that exception and replace it)

so anyway

use wireshark to see how the browser set it when logged in to owa

and replicate it in a script for any user so it no longer becomes null = no error remember give yourself permission over the faulty mailbox and run the script job done!! 4 days of hunting around fixed in 10 mins

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 7:01 PM

0

Can you explain further how you determined what values the Autodiscover settings had and how you set them appropriately. I am trying to figure out the syntax of the commands.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 8:59 PM

0

Hope this helps:

http://www.proexchange.be/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=686

- Ilse

Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:00 PM

0

Please can you help me.

OOF only works for us using webmail. For users still using Outlook 2003 it works perfect without no problem but this is an issue for Outlook 2007.

We are using exchange 2007

My exchange server name is grkms1

domain name is gorkana

I have tried using this two command in exchange shell to delete and creating new autodiscover but it does not work at all.

Remove-AutoDiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity "grkms1\Autodiscover(Default Web Site)"

New-AutoDiscoverVirtualDirectory -websitename "Default Web Site" -WindowsAuthentication $true -Dige
stAuthentication $true

Please help what wrong with the cmd am using.

Thursday, November 29, 2007 2:00 PM

0

Please can you help me.

OOF only works for us using webmail. For users still using Outlook 2003 it works perfect without no problem but this is an issue for Outlook 2007.

We are using exchange 2007

My exchange server name is grkms1

domain name is gorkana

I have tried using this two command in exchange shell to delete and creating new autodiscover but it does not work at all.

Remove-AutoDiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity "grkms1\Autodiscover(Default Web Site)"

New-AutoDiscoverVirtualDirectory -websitename "Default Web Site" -WindowsAuthentication $true -Dige
stAuthentication $true

Please help what wrong with the cmd am using.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007 4:31 PM

0

In my situation, the Autoconfiguration settings are correct and so are all other settings mentioned in this post. I do not believe this is an Outlook Anywhere issue either. The issue is caused by opening outlook while logged on to your computer as a different user than your email account, even though you enter the correct e-mail account information while Outlook is loading. It seems as though OOF is not using the logon information that you enter into Outlook.

If you right-click on Outlook, select Run As..., then enter your email account information, OOF works, because Outlook is running under the correct user account.

I have this issue because our Exchange 2007 environment is installed as a separate resource domain, which means our users never open Outlook using their e-mail account, even though they enter their e-mail account information when prompted by Outlook.

I would say you have this issue when connected via Outlook anywhere because of the same reason. I would bet OOF only works seamlessly if your user domain and Exchange domain were one in the same.

Friday, February 01, 2008 3:38 PM

0

In our environment the issue was because we use a proxy server, and had a typo in our local server exceptions list. As soon as we added our domain - LEG* in the list this problem went away. Funny how it didn't affect our Outlook 2003 clients.

Hopefully someone will find this useful.

Monday, March 10, 2008 2:15 PM

0

For me worked well restart of IIS at the Exchange server.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 5:37 PM

0

Try deleting and recreating the profile using Autodiscover that fixed it for me!!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 2:40 PM

0

This is what has worked for us

You receive an error message when you try to start the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook 2003

View products that this article applies to.

Article ID	:	823472
Last Review	:	July 27, 2006
Revision	:	2.5

For a Microsoft Outlook 2002 version of this article, see 327353 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327353/).

SYMPTOMS

When you click Out of Office Assistant on the Tools menu in Microsoft Outlook, you may receive the following error message:

The command is not available. See the program documentation about how to use this extension.

Back to the top

CAUSE

This behavior may occur if the following key is present in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Resiliency

Back to the top

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, quit Outlook, rename the Resiliency registry key, and then restart Outlook. To do this, follow these steps. 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:

322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

1.	Quit Outlook if it is running.
2.	Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and then click Task Manager.
3.	On the Processes tab, verify that Outlook.exe does not appear in the list of processes. If it does, click Outlook.exe and then click End Process.
4.	On the File menu, click Exit Task Manager.
5.	Click Start, and then click Run.
6.	In the Open box, type regedit and then click OK.
7.	Locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook
8.	Right-click the Resiliency subkey (if it exists), and then click Rename.
9.	Type Resiliency.old, and then press ENTER.
10.	Quit Registry Editor.
11.	Start Outlook, and then click Out of Office Assistant on the Tools menu.

Thursday, July 24, 2008 7:17 PM

0

We have the same exact problem. exchange 2007 allow outlook 2003 to use out-of-office assistance but not outlook 2007 any it is working when uinsg OWA but I would love to find out why outlook 2007 still not working.

Please email me to let me if there is any solution in the future for this issue.

I am sure Microsoft will find a solution it is just a matter of time.

Thursday, December 04, 2008 12:39 PM

0

Greetings,

I have been investigating this issue for a customer today, I know this is an old post but i'm sure others will find their way here too. I stumbled over HenrikR's post (http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2885438&SiteID=17) and that gave me an answer to our issue.

I figured I would link it here, since this post is regarding migrations. In shot, the issue was that the primary smtp domain for the users who had the issue wasn't the same at the autodiscover domain.

Take care!

/\/\artin

Friday, January 09, 2009 11:18 PM

1

Eric Draven_ said:

You MUST be the owner of the mailbox to open the OOF assistant so that means that you must be logged using the user's domain account.

Creating just the profile on a machine that has no joined your domain or using a domain account that is not the owner of the mailbox will not work.

Eric Draven is flat-out wrong. You *can* login to Windows as user X, open Outlook as user Y, and configure the OOF. In my case, I needed to create a DNS A record for autodiscover.<myFQDN>.

Monday, April 06, 2009 9:29 PM

1

Actually..... Eric is correct... if you are talking about a person logging into a child domain... opening outlook.. and connecting to a mailbox attached to a resource or other domain account..

if you do a "RUNAS" to start outlook and use the mailbox owner account yes.. OOF will work... otherwise it will not...

see this :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954574

I have reproduced this exact issue....

Alternatively you could also grant the child domain account full access .. this would allow OOF to function correctly...

Steve

Proposed As Answer by Corbett Enders Monday, April 27, 2009 7:38 PM

Monday, April 27, 2009 7:38 PM

0

WayCoolKennel, you rock. So obviously this is an Outlook 2007 bug...

When you try to set an Out-of-Office (OOF) reply in Outlook 2007, you may receive the following error message:

Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.

This problem occurs when the user account that you use to log on to the computer differs from the user account that you use to log on to Outlook 2007.

Thank you for posting that support article.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009 9:58 AM

0

Hey..

I have this problem on one of my users.. we are using 2003 but the servers have all been upgraded to 2007.

The above resolution seems to work.. The only problem is that it will not work with the Runas function in regedt32.. It will then create the current user to be the admin that im using runas with.
i`ve also tried the network connect in regedit.. and that cannot connect to the current user settings either.

Is there any way to find the information of the user logged in on regestry ? Even if i use runas?

i cannot change the policies for this for only one user.. we have over 2000 users on the same system.

EDIT: Its all fixed now. it was a profile problem that created a regestry error.. (how odd is that) Anyways.. The poblem is now solved.

Friday, May 29, 2009 10:23 AM

0

For me this was a client issue and I just deleted all my mail profiles and then started Outlook. If I've understood this right the autoconf will configure it right if you do it like this. Atleast it worked for me.

Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:57 PM

0

Here is what worked for me:

The problem everyone is describing ultimately leads to outlook not knowing how to get to the autodiscover settings of Exchange 2007.
I noticed that our home user's (who is not on our domain) outlook was trying to go to "autodiscover.{domain}.com". This was trying to
resolve to our web server since "*.{domain}.com" is usually setup on DNS servers as a catch-all for websites.

I added an alias in our DNS server "autodiscover.{domain}.com" and pointed it to the EMail server specifically.

I then flushed the user's DNS and tested with a ping to verify it was resolving to the email server first.
Started up outlook and Out Of Office worked perfectly! It did prompt her for her login/password upon first
starting outlook since she is not a domain user, but after supplying the credentials, she was working without a hitch!

The above is much easier than most other steps I've seen in other links and resolves the ultimate issue that outlook is trying to find
"autodiscover.{domain}.com" and can't.

~ Raestlin

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 12:49 PM

0

Hi. Solution that worked for me:
Create another mail profile.
Delete the old one.
Use the new one.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312354

Best regards,
Valery Vainkop.

Proposed As Answer by Vainkop Valery Tuesday, September 01, 2009 12:49 PM

Friday, September 11, 2009 8:41 PM

0

I beat my head on this for a while...first it was the unified communications certificate, then auto discovery, then ews directory and now DNS. 
My final solution was DNS related.
I had to point the outside address of the exchange 2007 box that the Outlook 2007 Auto discovery was looking for back to the inside address so that OOF would work.
We use a proxy for IE so I took my proxy off which I knew would not let me outside to the Internet. Of course Outlook balked when I attempted the OOF again. Then, I modified the local hosts file and pointed the outside name to the inside ip address. Worked like a charm. Then, I knew I had to modify the DNS.

this link helped me get a grip on it.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124251.aspx

Good Luck,

D

Proposed As Answer by Happy_New_Year Monday, November 30, 2009 2:14 PM

Monday, November 30, 2009 2:17 PM

0

Some how our users were not running correct policy, so we preformed a gpupdate /force from a command prompt which realign the user's system w/ current Policy. This corrected the issue. Remember to reboot after the gpupdate.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009 10:19 PM

0

I had the same problem all clients got this error 'Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.

I just installed NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Family Update for .NET versions 2.0 through 3.5 (KB951847) x64
rebooted the server wolla! it works

/Soeren

Monday, December 21, 2009 11:46 PM

0

I had the same problem all clients got this error 'Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.

I just installed NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Family Update for .NET versions 2.0 through 3.5 (KB951847) x64
rebooted the server wolla! it works

/Soeren

Dude, you're a genius! :D

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 1:22 AM

1

I cannot resolve this "Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later."

I moved mailboxes to 2007 this weekend. I have a single AD domain. I have a single Exchange server.

I did everything in 940726. (As I had certificate errors.)
I have checked my web.config file and it shows the explicit path to the Exchange install dir.
I ran the Test Auto Configuration from my Outlook client and it returned the correct Autodiscover URL and it claimed all connections successful.
I edited authentication in IIS EWS and Autodiscovery directories so that Anonymous is Disabled.
I have manually edited my host file and pointed the public autodiscover address to my CAS internal IP. Still no go.
I have installed .Net 3.5 SP1 and the update for 3.5 SP1.
I have deleted my outlook profile completely and then had my new profile auto-configured.
I have rebooted both the server and my computer.

I have no idea what else to try. I think its stupid that this feature is supposed to make life 'easier' yet somehow ive spent a day and a half on it.

M

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 11:56 AM

0

Thanks Tom, this worked for us.

Monday, January 04, 2010 6:38 PM

2

I resolved this issue by doing the folowing:

In the Exchange power shell I ran this command:

get-WebservicesVirtualDirectory |fl server,name,internalurl,externalurl

and I saw that the "ExternalUrl : " value was blank

I then used this command to set that value. For me it should have been https://mail.mypublicdomain.com/EWS /Exchange.asmx

The command was:

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -identity "EX-SRV1\EWS (Default Web Site)" -externalurl https://mail.mypublicdomain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx

note that EX-SRV1 is the local name of my exchange server so you will need to change that to match yours

Thanks to everyone who helped get me on track with this one...

*note I edited this to include a " that was missing in the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command the first time I posted.

Thursday, January 07, 2010 8:51 PM

1

I Had a lot of the issues people are talking about, OOF not working internally but working externally, internal autodiscover authentication prompts that I had to click cancel so I could work etc. - Initially everythng worked great, until I decommissioned my 2003 environment, then I started getting all the described problems. After trolling many web sites and trying everything under the sun i.e registry fixes to clear ipv6, I finally got it solved.

I started off by removing everything and starting over, ok not everything just the autodiscover virtual directory, the web services virtual directory and disabling outlook anywhere

so, Remove-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "CAS01\EWS (Default Web Site)"
Remove-AutoDiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity "CAS01\Autodiscover (Default Web Site)"
Disable-OutlookAnywhere

If you have multiple CAS servers I suggest disabling doing them one at a time and not disabling the second until you get the first enabled.

Also when I got this going initially I was using the external name internally for certificate reasons because we used .int in our domain and we couldn't put that on a SAN certificate - so on our SAN certificate we have the internal bios name without the domain and the fully qualified external names as so
autodiscover.domain.com
mail.domain.com
cas01
cas02

Note: In my environment - mail.domain.com NATs to my Ironport box which serves as my edge server and autodiscover.domain.com NATs to my NLB CAS servers

So to rebuild I used

New-WebServicesVirtualDirectory - just like that makes it easy, adds default stuff - customize in next command
New-AutoDiscoverVirtualDirectory

Then customize for your environment - just remember to put them exactly the way you have in the certificate - and if your using https which is the default make sure you go into IIS manager on your CAS and make sure SSL is checked- it wasn't for EWS for me

To customize I used
Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity “CAS01\EWS (Default Web Site)” -ExternalURL https://autodiscover.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx -WindowsAuthentication:$true
Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity “CAS01\EWS (Default Web Site)” -InternalURL https://CAS01/EWS/Exchange.asmx -WindowsAuthentication:$true

Set-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity 'autodiscover (default Web site)' -InternalUrl 'https://CAS01/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml'
Set-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity 'autodiscover (default Web site)' -WindowsAuthentication $True -BasicAuthentication $False -DigestAuthentication $False
Set-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity 'autodiscover (default Web site)' -ExternalUrl 'https://autodiscover.domain.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml'

If above internal command doesn't work this will I forget I think I used both
Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity CAS01 -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri https://CAS01/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml

Then I enabled outlook anywhere again
Enable-OutlookAnywhere -Server:CAS01 -ExternalHostname:autodiscover.domain.com -ClientAuthenticationMethod:NTLM -SSLOffloading:$false

And the annoying errors went away

Proposed As Answer by P-H-A-R-O Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:43 PM

Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:44 PM

0

Hey guys, you might wanna give this site a good look...

http://www.pro-exchange.eu/modules.php?$1&name=News&file=article&sid=686

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:09 AM

0

Hey Guys,

I hope this helps.

Please bear in mind that any work I do to my Exchange environment has to be approved by a person who has no Exchange experience... I have MCITP Exchange Administrator... wonder why they hired me?

I recently upgraded from Ex2007 to Ex2010 changing our Exchange 07 CAS server to legacymail.ourcompany.com and moving mail.ourcompany.com to the Exchange 2010 CAS server was not approved, I did tell them that their would be problems. both servers internally are using mail.ourcompany.com "Not good I know" I have to wait for approval hopefully in the next few days.

One of the users (Office 2007) was on leave and had the auto reply set when their mailbox was moved.
I showed the user how to turn off the auto reply in OWA to allow more time to work out the problem.
I ran the Test Email Autoconfiguration in Outlook and noticed that the test was bouncing from the old server to the new server.

I modified the users hosts file with mail.ourcompany.com with the new servers IP address.

Told the user to log out and then log back in again and report the results.

The user reported back the they can now manage the out of office assistant from Outlook again.

Autodiscover uses DNS, if their is something wrong with the DNS the autodiscover will not function correctly always verifiy that you can reslove your server names.

Thursday, March 04, 2010 2:15 PM

0

Slightly different fix for me.....i dont have the external url setting enabled but as a quick fix i added in an exception to ie on group policy - i added in the internal server "https://INTserver.domain.com" and also the external "https://EXTserver.domain.com" as we also run through a proxy, now it works. this was also affecting the calender access as well.

Friday, April 09, 2010 4:50 PM

0

I had the same issue with users whose machines were part of a different domain than the exchange organization as previously posted. I applied the hotfix found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954574 and it resolved the situation.

--Jim Sourbeer

Proposed As Answer by IAGoldWing Thursday, June 03, 2010 5:18 PM

Monday, June 14, 2010 11:48 PM

0

Hi ashadfar

I had a similar problem, my OOF return the same error message as yours, however if we do OOF from outlook 2003 it's all working. When i executed this command in exchange power shell: "test-outlookwebservices" it returned an error - not able to contact autodiscover services (err ir 1013).

I fixed it by uninstalling KB948609. this is .net2.0 sp2 (cummulative update) and somehow doesn't work well with exchange 07. FYI my server environment is SBS 2008.

Good Luck

Thursday, July 01, 2010 2:45 PM

0

I had this issue with a single user and was able to fix it by turning off "Work Offline" in Internet Explorer. I know this won't help everyone in the thread but I hope it helps someone!

Just log in as the affected user on the affected computer, launch IE, go to the File Menu, and uncheck Work Offline.

Cheers, thanks all for posting!

Proposed As Answer by breb02 Thursday, July 15, 2010 2:38 PM

Thursday, July 15, 2010 2:41 PM

0

Reading this helped me a lot: http://www.exchange-genie.com/2007/07/exchange-2007-autodiscover-service-part-1/

Basically I have just created a new A record on my primary zone in the DNS called just "autodiscovery" pointing to the CAS IP address ... and voila, OOF was available again for Office 2007 users.

Friday, August 13, 2010 5:14 AM

0

This problem can also occur in Outlook 2007 with Exchange 2010 Standard server that has a URL rewrite setting to forward HTTP traffic to HTTPS in IIS. Disabling the URL rewrite resolves the issue temporarily. Exchange Management Console and PowerShell can fail to establish connection with the URL rewrite enabled as well. Kind of annoying but it's worth 'not' being contacted all the time by users who didn't read the "httpS" part of the webmail link for OWA. Just my two cents.

Friday, August 13, 2010 2:25 PM

0

I have tried pretty much everything on this thread with no luck. Here's what I've got so far:

Recently changed to new cert.

Get out off office error in Outlook 2007. OOF works in OWA

EWS was set as stated here

Change to resiliency in registry did nothing

Setting IP in default website instead of using all all unassigned, still broken.

Set autodiscover.domainname.com to IP address of mail server in my HOSTS file (DNS option won't work for me because of the way the domain is configured)

Testing configuration fails 8 ways from Sunday. I did notice that everything is trying to go out to an https://mailserver.domain.com

Autodiscover.xml is a placeholder file with nothing in it.

I am in the process of installing a whole bunch of updates that were never put in place, but not sure if I'll be able to reboot until much later today.

I assume the failing autodiscover is the problem. I'm fairly inexperienced with Exchange beyond setting up mailboxes so any help would be appreciated.

Friday, September 03, 2010 2:33 PM

0

Persistence is key to this error.

I also tried all the above fixes unsuccessfully.

Eventually found this fix: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/exchangesvrclients/thread/7dfdbc80-8a65-447a-be38-3f4ec5379927/#page:2

the upshot being to uninstall Dot Net 3.5 SP1 and hotfixes KB948610 and KB948609 and then rebooted.

I was able to find the actual issue by running the command (as mentioned previously) test-outlookwebservices on the exchange box

very disappointed that an update could cause so many issues.

Good luck all.

rob

Friday, September 03, 2010 5:19 PM

0

This is what I did to solve the Autodiscover issue:

In IIS on CAS Server, navigate to Autodiscover directory and open SSL settings. Set to Ignore client certs, and require SSL. I did the same thing on EWS directory.

Autodiscover resolves now, now just to solve the OOA problem.

Wednesday, October 06, 2010 2:15 PM

0

Hello,

Quite new to this area of Exchange but we have just installed an Exchange 2010 server on Win2008.

We've migrated approximiately 15 users from our Exchange 2003 server before we noticed that OOF wasn't working. I have spent the best part of 3 days trying to find a fix for this and have tried pretty much everything mentioned in the posts above.

Changing the authentication methods of the AutoDiscover and EWS virtual directories.
Adding the IP address and domain name of our Exchange server.
Recreating mail profiles.
Checking user account details in Exchange.
I've not been able to get any of the powershell commands to work so far and just get errors saying that they are not valid commands (I suspect this maybe down to my own account permissions but can't prove it as I'm not the administrator).
We have .NET framework 2.0 installed on the pc's.
We are running Outlook 2007 (Outlook 2003 users do not have a problem).
Added our domain details to the IE(v6) exceptions list.
Added AutoDiscover URL to the Trusted Sites list in IE(v6).
I have also tested this on a Windows 7 Pro box with Office 2010 and get the same error.
I've enabled the HTTP redirect for Autodiscover to the Microsoft schema.

I've run out of ideas and I think I've even run out of articles to read!

Can anybody suggest anything I haven't tried?

Thanks.

Thursday, November 18, 2010 3:50 PM

1

We were getting the same problem with Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 - Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.

Just paid for Microsoft Support to resolve my issue over the telephone and this is what worked for me on SBS 2008.

In IIS navigate to SBS Web Applications -> Rpc -> SSL settings then:

check - require SSL

check - require 128-bit SSL

check - ignore (Client certificates)

You may have to ensure that other applications within SBS Web Applications have the same SSL settings (except RpcWithCert which should be set to Require).

Restart IIS and Out of Office should work correcly.

Monday, December 13, 2010 12:47 PM

0

Hi all

In reply to Robert, did exactly as you did, and it worked, for a while

Users reported that this fix worked for a day, but then I have to do an IISRESET to get it working each and every time

Guys, has anyone, anywhere had any kind of answer from Microsoft as to a fix for this issue?

Kind Regards

Tony Saunders

Proposed As Answer by Gopi.JN Sunday, September 11, 2011 7:33 PM

Tuesday, December 14, 2010 4:09 PM

0

Hi,

I had same issue tried all above steps no use ...finally re install CAS role ....now everything working fine only you need to update license key...Just one hour work J

Thanks, GJ

Proposed As Answer by nerd2011 Friday, December 17, 2010 8:49 PM

Friday, December 17, 2010 8:56 PM

0

I had the same issue.

What I found was the users who could not access OOF had a credential stored in the credential manager for the admin of the mail server.

I deleted it and then they could access there OOF.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010 3:25 PM

0

BAD MOUSE. Proposed answer button hit incorrectly, no chance to not accept.

Proposed As Answer by SherwinM Tuesday, December 21, 2010 10:47 PM

Tuesday, December 21, 2010 10:49 PM

0

Apologies,

Nerd2011, I accidentally hit the "Propose As Answer" as well. Please disregard.

I had the same issue as well. I configured Exchange 2010 as per the white papers and everything is working correctly for most of the users. CAS, OWA, OOB and autodiscover is all working fine but still got this error. The only way I fixed the issue was running gpupdate /force when logged on as the user.

Proposed As Answer by dPSupport Monday, October 22, 2012 3:24 PM

Friday, January 07, 2011 12:34 PM

0

We've been working on this for 2 days, read all forums in the world, (there seem different causes/solutions) found a solution for us in the end, so I hope this note will be helpfull to somebody. The OOF problem in Outlook 2007 (with server 2008/Exchange 2007 for us), including autodiscover problems, was caused by a MS update on the server: KB973917. This has apparently effect on permissions in IIS. We removed the update, rebooted and solved everyting. Although there seems to be some way to correct IIS after the update with scripting etc. /reinstall sp2, we thought we had spent enough time on this.

Proposed As Answer by Reboot-IT Monday, January 23, 2012 5:26 PM

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 2:45 PM

0

My user had "Work Offline" in IE selected. Unselected and all is well.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 5:07 AM

0

Hi Martin,

You wouldn't happen to remember the fix to this would you? the link you provided no longer works.

Thanks

SHaun

Thursday, March 03, 2011 1:01 PM

2

Just create a new outlook profile, and it will work fine :)

Proposed As Answer by mo_anas Thursday, March 03, 2011 1:35 PM

Monday, March 28, 2011 1:07 PM

0

Try to follow the FIX this can help you

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970123

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 12:08 PM

0

This solution works for me! (Exchange 2010 migrated from Exchange 2003, Outlook 2010)

Thursday, September 15, 2011 3:46 PM

1

can you please share the script you are using i have been trying for 2 months on fixing this issue i am not having any luck please email me at bontyal@earthlink.net

Proposed As Answer by TechNet_Ninja Wednesday, September 28, 2011 5:51 PM
Unproposed As Answer by TechNet_Ninja Wednesday, September 28, 2011 5:53 PM
Proposed As Answer by TechNet_Ninja Wednesday, September 28, 2011 5:54 PM

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 5:59 PM

0

In office 2007, if your exchange accounts were migrated from 2003-2007 or so on... and the user was logged on during the migration with an OOO on, then the C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file became corrupted or lost its reference server for that domain controller.

you will have to add the new domain ip's and controller names to the existing hosts file with administrative rights, save, reboot, and have user log in. Have the user turn on outlook, check OOO, it should come up with a certificate validation, INSTALL the certificate, don't just view it or cancel it, install it. Once that is done, give a few seconds, the OOO should return and display. Thanks.

Edited by TechNet_Ninja Wednesday, September 28, 2011 6:01 PM

Monday, January 23, 2012 5:30 PM

0

We've been working on this for 2 days, read all forums in the world, (there seem different causes/solutions) found a solution for us in the end, so I hope this note will be helpfull to somebody. The OOF problem in Outlook 2007 (with server 2008/Exchange 2007 for us), including autodiscover problems, was caused by a MS update on the server: KB973917. This has apparently effect on permissions in IIS. We removed the update, rebooted and solved everyting. Although there seems to be some way to correct IIS after the update with scripting etc. /reinstall sp2, we thought we had spent enough time on this.

I, like so many people have been scratching their heads over this one but for me Dirkteur's answer did it for me.

If you are familiar with scripting and dealing with the internals of Exchange and IIS then I am sure that many of the other solutions are also valid but if you want an easy solution just uninstall the MS update on the server: KB973917 - that did it for me!!

Gary Smith XP Networks Plus Ltd

Thursday, February 16, 2012 9:50 PM

0

I've been dealing with this for most of the day, and none of the answers I found on these forums worked or made any sense in my environment. As it turned out, the user had rules in error under rules and alerts in his Outlook 2007 Client. I deleted those rules and the Out Of Office message started sending.

Edited by E Jackson Thursday, February 16, 2012 9:51 PM
Proposed As Answer by E Jackson Thursday, February 16, 2012 9:51 PM

Friday, February 24, 2012 10:17 PM

0

Hi,

I've solved this issue for a few customers after much trial, error, research, and testing. in their cases all Exchange 2010 with Outlook 2010. Some users on Win XP, Some Win 7. Some use Outlook Anywhere, Some Not. Usually the issue occurs when OUTSIDE the internal network, or has a primary SMTP alias different than that of the autodiscover URLs configured for exchange. The Hotfixes above may/may not directly address the issue if you already have Autodiscovery nailed down tight.

To Start, per KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940881) and other places in TechNet, Outlook is hard coded to follow the Autodiscovery process in a very specific order and goes like this when Non-Domain Joined, and similarly when Domain-joined.

<snip>

Background

When Outlook 2007(+) is not domain-joined, you have to use a predefined URL method or an HTTP redirect method in order to locate the Autodiscover service. The following list contains two predefined URL methods and one HTTP redirect method:

https://<<var>smtpdomain</var>>/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml
https://autodiscover.<<var>smtpdomain</var>>/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml
http://autodiscover.<<var>smtpdomain</var>>/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml

</snip>

So, Outlook Dials those URLs and hopefully gets to that XML file, and then it tells it what to do, where to go, etc.

Now Why is that Important to this?

Out of the Office (OOF) in MS Outlook only uses Autodiscovery to set / read / etc that OOF Messages.. You may be able to connect Outlook to an Exchange mailbox with a non-working Autodiscovery setup, and then receive issues when accessing OOF.

So be sure that you have autodiscover URLs working (and all your URLs working for that matter), in Exchange Management Shell, like so:

Get-ClientAccessServer | ft Name,*Uri
Get-OwaVirtualDirectory | ft Server,*Url
Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory | ft Server,*Url
Get-OabVirtualDirectory | ft Server,*Url
Get-ActiveSyncVirtualDirectory | ft Server,*Url

review the URLs, specifically those related to Autodiscovery and Exchange Web Services (EWS) and be sure they are appropriate.

Understanding the Autodiscover Service:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124251.aspx

Also, be sure that those URLs are included in the installed UCC/SAN Certificate that you have purchased for your exchange environment. if you are using a wildcard (*) cert, then less important. However, if you host multiple domains w/ your Exchange infrastructure, then each domain's autodiscover FQDNs must be accounted for

Another aspect of the OOF process, specifically, is that it performs autodiscovery via the PRIMARY SMTP alias for the user's mailbox. So, if my primary OWA FQDN is mail.company.com. In the OWA UCC/SAN Cert, I include 'autodiscover.company.com' as alternate SAN name. Further in this example, my mailbox is ron.sears@company.com. Once I login to my Outlook 2010 mailbox, and then I click the OOF button in Outlook it performs the process against "autodiscover.company.com" from wherever that Outlook Client is (Internet, LAN, etc). If it doesn't work, OOF doesn't work.

Further, Let's say If I change my Primary SMTP alias to "ron.sears@company.NET" instead. Then once I am in Outlook 2010, and then i click the OOF button, it would perform autodiscovery on "autodiscover.company.NET" for my OOF to display it. if it cant resolve that name, or it's not valid in the SSL certificate, then you can have this problem. OOF in Outlook follows the SMTP alias that is primary on a given mailbox.

further, then in environments that have users w/ different PRIMARY SMTP aliases (@company.com, @company.net, @company.org) then you would need autodiscover.company.com, autodiscover.company.net, and autodiscover.company.org setup in DNS and your UCC/SAN SSL certificate installed on CAS servers.

I hope this information can be helpful for you in solving these 'interesting' behaviors of Outlook.

Further, test your autodiscovery for one user in EACH SMTP FQDN at https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com provided by Microsoft for free as a testing tool.

Cheers,

-Ron

Friday, March 02, 2012 4:46 AM

0

This may occurred due to following causes:

You’re trying to open the OOF settings of different Exchange-account
Incorrect Auto discover Service settings
Wrong certificate
“Enable Anonymous Access” is enabled in IIS on te EWS virtual directory.

In most cases, the reason for this error is that If you try to adjust the Out of Office settings of User A, while you’re logged on as User B, As an Exchange administrator, you probably need to modify colleague’s Out of Office settings on occasional basis. Unfortunately, this is not possible since we have migrated from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007, I couldn’t modify Out of Office settings anymore. Editing OOF settings by logging in with an administrator account resulted in the following error:

“Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later”

2. [Collect AutoConfiguration Status in Outlook]

===================================

a. While Outlook is running, click the CTRL key and then right-click the Outlook icon in the system tray and then select “Test Email Autoconfiguration”.

b. Confirm that your email address is in the address field, uncheck“Use Guessmart” and “secure Guessmartauthentication” boxes. Then click the “Test” button.

c. Once it runs, please send me a screen shot of the Logtab andResultstab.

3. [CAS server configuration information]

=============================

On CAS server, open “Exchange Management Shell” and type the cmdlet:

Get-autodiscovervirtualdirectory | fl >c:\auto.txt

Get-clientaccessserver | fl >c:\cas.txt

Get-ExchangeCertificate |fl >c:\certlog.txt

It's a pop-up you may have seen before when using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to open a mailbox homed on an Exchange 2007 Mailbox server in your Exchange organization...

When opening a mailbox homed on an Exchange 2007 Mailbox server, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 will use services provided by a Microsoft Exchange 2007 Client Access server in order to configure its Out-of-Office settings. If you get the error above, there are a couple of things that might cause this error...let's have a look :-)

1. Check if you are connected using RPC of using RPC over HTTP

To check if you are connected using RPC or using HTTPS, you can right-click the Outlook icon located in your system tray, and select Connection Status.

I'm connected here using TCP/IP, and not using HTTPs.

2. Check which URL your Outlook is using to configure the OOF, and if you can browse to it!

When you press Ctrl and right-click on the Outlook icon located in your system tray, you can select Test E-mail AutoConfiguration.

When you select this, enter the e-mailaddress of the mailbox you have opened, and the password. Since we are not using Pop or Imap, no use in leaving the GuessSmart checkboxes checked.

After clicking Test, you will get the URL used to configure OOF, as shown below.

And it's the URL next to OOF URL, that is of interest to us. Since you checked how you were connected in step 1, you need to focus on the URL defined with Protocol Exchange HTTP, or on protocol Exchange RPC if the connection status revealed TCP/IP, which it did in my case.

When using a browser, you should be able to enter the URL, give your credentials, and you should end up with something like this:

If not, check:

- the URL, is it the correct one? In the example below, a URL is returned by the Autodiscover service which is completely incorrect!

To change the URL, you need to use the Exchange Management Shell cmdlet Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory on the Client Access server which provisionned the incorrect information. You can use the same Test Autoconfiguration to retrieve the CAS responsible for the wrong data.

And on that Client Access server (nts00), I change the internalURL and the externalURL to match the correct settings!

- make sure the ExternalUrl is accessible from the outside (and published!)

- check permissions set on the virtual directory EWS, they should match the ones below

3. Make sure you have a valid certificate

Make sure you have a certificate configured for your Client Access IIS service, with the correct names, issued by a trusted CA for your clients, and that is valid for the current time! In the example below, my certificate enabled for IIS is valid, issued by a trusted CA, and has the correct names!

4. Check Outlook Version if logged in using a different account

When using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, there was a bug which has been solved in Office 2007 Service Pack 2.

Situation: you log into machine x, using the account Administrator. You configure Outlook to open the mailbox of user Ilse Van Criekinge, and you log into the mailbox by providing Outlook with the credentials of user Ilse Van Criekinge. URLs returned by Autodiscover are correct, reachable, certificate is ok, but still you get that error box listed in the top. The reason is that Outlook up until Sp2, will query the Exchange Web services using the credentials of the logged in user, in our example user Administrator.

You can see this information when checking the log files on your Client Access server.

Applying Service Pack 2 of Office 2007 resolves this issue :-)

And OOF can be set, even when logged in to the machine with a different domain user :-)

OOF can be scheduled

**If none of above seems to worked then just remove the mailbox which having problem with OOA then configure again a fresh copy.

Proposed As Answer by BarbWC Friday, April 20, 2012 5:40 PM
Unproposed As Answer by BarbWC Friday, April 20, 2012 5:40 PM

Friday, April 20, 2012 5:45 PM

0

I had the same problem. We migrated from an SBS 2003 R2 server to SBS 2011. One mailbox, mine is used to create customer forms and all that special stuff. The OOF stopped working quite suddenly after changing IPM.class in one of the public folders. As I log in either as myself or admin I think Outlook couldn't tell who was on. I tried right click on the icon and run as but that didn't work.

What did work for me: Go into Tools>email accounts, click on the appropriate mailbox and click on repair. Click on manual configuration and click on the more settings button. On the security tab put a check mark in always prompt for logon credentials.

It worked the first time. It's a little annoying to have the extra log in step on my computer but OOF works while online and when using OWA.

Proposed As Answer by BarbWC Friday, April 20, 2012 5:46 PM

Out of Office Assistant

All Replies

You receive an error message when you try to start the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook 2003

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