send/receive hang on "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" and will never finish?
- When I hit send/receive on a few clients the process will hang on "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" and will never finish? These same user can long on the OWA and send/receive just fine. The problem is that while it's hanging it can't go out and look for new email. Any thoughts?
All Replies
What version of Exchange are you using?
What does the client error say in the sync issues folder?
Deli
Try rebuilding the Offline Address Book - go to ESM | Recipients | Offline Address List | right-mouse click on Default Offline Address Book and select Rebuild.
Jason
- Oh sorry I'm using exchange 2007. It's not happening to all just a few users.
Which version of outlook are the users using that are expieriencing problems?
Did you configure Autodiscovery for Outlook 2007?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201695.aspx
Deli
- Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. Autodicovery is configured and working well, for most clients.
So you are saying this is both a problem for Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003?
Outlook 2007 => problem for some users?
Outlook 2003 => Problem for some users?
Have you created a public folder and configured public folder publishing for Outlook 2003 clients and earlier?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124351.aspx
Can you find any errors in the Sync Issues folder in outlook and also post them here
Deli
- I would like to just fix the Outlook 2007 for now because I know I can upgrade the 2003 clients when I get a few mins. They don't get any errors but it just hangs and says, under progress processing. (This is when you click on Send/Receive Details).
Can you do the following:
Right Click on the Outlook Systray Icon while holding down the CTRL key
Select Test Email Auto Configuration...
Unselect all Guessmart boxes
Verify that the results display the correct information for internal and external URLs
Deli
- That all looked good. But when I look at the connection status by Right Clicking on the Outlook Systray Icon while holding down the CTRL key. It's says its connected to my DNS Server 5 times and my exchange box twice, should that be a issue?
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=32033&d=1193059376 It is normal that you connect to your DNS server with multiple connections as that is your Domain Controller!
Exchange doesn't use a separate Directory it uses Active Directory
Are you experiencing problems when users are internal and external?
Can you post the result of the Email Autodiscovery
Deli
- Internal issue only so far. Autodiscover results are here
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=32074&d=1193079712 Does your internal DNS resolve the mail.meridithnh.org to the exchange server that is hosting the CAS role?
Did you try to set the internal URL to the same name as the other services?
Deli
- Does your internal DNS resolve the mail.meridithnh.org to the exchange server that is hosting the CAS role? No, it resovles the serever's name.
Did you try to set the internal URL to the same name as the other services? No, should I if some internal users are ok? You must also point your internal name to a CAS server!
Deli
Deli Pro-Exchange wrote: You must also point your internal name to a CAS server!
Deli
Maybe I don't understand this question?Can you ping the hostname listed in the url
mail.meridithnh.org does resolve to the same address as the internal Exchange server name?
Deli
Deli Pro-Exchange wrote: Can you ping the hostname listed in the url
mail.meridithnh.org does resolve to the same address as the internal Exchange server name?
Deli
If I ping mail.meredithnh.org I get the firewall IP. If I ping the server name I get the internal IP.Then you must change your internal URL for the OAB to your sever name
Deli
Deli Pro-Exchange wrote: Then you must change your internal URL for the OAB to your sever name
Deli
I think this worked I have only tested on one client so far but I'll mark it solved in a after I check a few more. Thank you.I ran into this same problem and read several people's responses on this blog and others. Here is the issue as I have found it after quite a bit of testing.
With Autodiscovery working properly and the OAB in good shape (urls are correct and it seems to work just fine when downloaded fresh), and the OAB having been rebuilt in Exchange 2007....
Outlook 2003 clients will pick up the changes just fine either when restarted or when one goes to tools> Send/Receive > Download Address Book.
Outlook 2007 clients, however, will not pick up the changes in the OAB when restarted, and when the tools> Send/Receive> Download Address Book is used the Send and Receive will hang and never complete. HOWEVER, if you go into the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder and remove all the .oab files, then a restart your outlook, a fresh copy of the OAB is downloaded and changes are in there.
There is some WMC (weird microsoft ***) going on with Outlook 2007 and the OAB.
I am having the same problem here, are there any other suggestions for this. Everything else seems to be working fine, my autodiscovery worked like a charm (much to my suprise
) and send/receive is working great aside from this hiccup... Is this a known problem? Thanks for any further tips!I am also experience this same issue. My Outlook 2003 clients seem to work fine, but my 2007 clients still hang on trying to download the OAB. Did anyone ever resolve this issue?
My issue was simply that my OAB site in IIS wasnt using the self generated cert, after enabling this and installing it on the client machine it worked fine. I thought that this would have been checked by default, could have been a setting I blew past and unchecked but I digress... HTH for someone.I had similar problem.
This actually arose due to the fact I had mistakenly set the Default web Site directory with a HTTP redirect which applied to all subfolders including OAB.
I did then rectify this by going into individual subfolders and unchecking Http Redirect from each sub folder, however unknowingly it created/modified a webconfig file under the OAB virtual directory. (you can explore it to see the file there)
If you test your OAB url (for people with the issue), which is : http(s)://servername/oab/[code]/oab.xml you will get Error 500.
Each time Outlook 2007 was trying to connect to get OAB, it was trying to read that webconfig file.
I fixed this by changing the permissions on that webconfig file to allow everyone and the above error was done, and also my Outlook 2007 was downloading the OAB again!
Now if the above fix did not fix your problem, you can temporarily effectively disable OAB by unticking Web Distribution of OAB and Public Folder Distribution in EMC under Organisation/Mailbox/Offline Address Book. Users will be able to do a send/reiceve without any errors/issues. However, if a new contact/user is added to your AD with exchange attributes, the clients will not be able to see this. I'm guessing if cached mode was also not used, issues would also occur if they tried using the GAL.
acidack, you are a lifesaver.
I looked at the other webconfig files in the internet directories and noticed they all had 'Authenticated Users' with read permissions while the OAB one did not. Adding this group with read permissions solved the problem; Outlook 2007 users are no longer frozen on the 'Offline address book connecting to Microsoft Exchange" message.
What caused this? I'm not sure. I was messing with the web settings trying to redirect people to OWA. Something I did must have caused this file to be re-created without the needed permissions.
- Proposed As Answer byMike Mackie Monday, April 13, 2009 2:54 PM
- Another here that your a life saver to. Bloody permissions on the OAB folders. Please note that OAB is listed in two places. Open it through IIS and browse the folder location of OAB. I set everyone to full, tested fine, then scaled back permissions to read only. I then search c:\program files\microsoft\exchange\ for oab folder and did the same there. All is well. Thanks heaps, been driving me crazy.
- I concur!
after rebuilding my OAB my IIS permissions got spanked as well. Thanks for the tip I was resolved in a matter of minutes even without having to do anything like IISRESET :-)
Chad Solarz Sr. Tech Instructor Directions Training MCSA / MCSE / MCDST / MCT MCTS: Vista / exch 2k7 / server 2k8 / forefront MCITP: Vista / server 2k8 - I'm having the same issue, but with only one user. The entire network is Office 2007 on a 2007 Exchange server. Its been mentioned in this thread that the problem was occuring with permissions in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\OAB, so when I checked there, there were ZERO files. All the other folders in clientaccess like owa, etc have files. Anyone know how to get the web.config into OAB, or some other way to fix this?
- This is exactly what happened to me and your answer fixed it. Thanks!
- Great solution guys. One more thing.
If that doesn't work, in IIS (7 or otherwise) under the OAB folder goto Authentication and enable anonymous authentication. Works like a dream. I really cant imagine what security concern it would be, read access to the OAB wouldn't be that bad of a leak for most companies. If you work for the CIA or NASA or something, try an alternative.
Austin computer repair - a) I tried deleting files as mentioned in path Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\*.oabb) Tools->Send Receive Settings, untick the checkbox of Download offline address bookc) restart Outlook 2007d) let the send/receive complete first time after restart of outlook, post that outlook will not take time in send/receive sync and hang at 'Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange'
- Apparently, if we all ran the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, we would have known about this with a lot less sleuthing involved... :P
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd535384(EXCHG.80).aspx - Actually, I think that isn't quite correct. Although running Microsoft's BPA tool will examine the permissions on the GUID folders under the OAB dir, it, for me at least, didn't check the OAB parent folder. Reading this TechNet article it states "The Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer examines security permissions on the %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange\ClientAccess\OAB\<GUID>". Again, I only tested this with my Exchange 2007 server and it didn't display any errors regarding permissions on the OAB dir.
Thank you CoryS and AcidAck for the solution.
