OAB Not Downloading to Outlook 2007

[itechaust]

Scenario: Outlook 2007 on Windows XP Pro SP3, MS Exchange Server 2007, iPhone 4s, 4 and 3GS, external POP email host, beginner user (i.e., me) of Exchange Server trying to make all of this technology behave itself.

When we first purchased iPhones our POP mail was arriving in Outlook then being passed to ES. This meant that iPhones syncing with ES did not receive emails unless Outlook was running on the user's PC. During this period the OAB updated correctly and regularly on the Outlook clients.

Recently we changed the priority so that POP mail is now received by ES and syncs with Outlook later. This works really well for the end users and everything is syncing ok.

BUT - and there's alway a BUT - now the Outlook clients will not download the OAB.

I have forced the OAB update on the server and the clients, run command line updates in the Exchange Management Shell and forced the update on the clients, but neither of these fixed the problem. I then deleted the *.oab files from the client PCs and restarted Outlook. The OAB downloaded OK and my new address list was visible - BUT, after I added a new contact in Recipient Configuration, Mail Contacts, the download stopped working on the Outlook clients!!!

I turned cache mode off in my Outlook Exchange account to see whether that made any difference and now I can't connect to ES at all. I can only work offline. I can't even access the exchange account via Control Panel. Hopefully I can solve this by removing the Exchange account and re-creating it.

Does anyone have a suggestion about how I can make the OAB download correctly on the email clients, please??? I would really appreciate it.

 

[Zelandakh]

During the POP time, the OAB may not have been working ;-)

If you can't connect to Exchange at all, removing and recreating the account is a bad idea.

Does OWA work?

OAB issues are often autodiscover based.

On the server, go to exchange powershell and run:
get-webservicesvirtualdirectory | fl
get-autodiscovervirtualdirectory | fl

Change the server names and FQDNs and post back.

 

[itechaust]

Thanks for you help Zelandakh. I've attached a PDF with the screen grabs.

 

[itechaust]

Sorry - I neglected to answer your other question. Yes - OWA is working. I can login and get my mail via the browser on my iPhone. I disconnected from WiFi before testing.

I have a concern about OWA though. The help says for external access to use a URL that includes the IP address. Is there any way I can create an "alias" URL to give to our users?

 

[Zelandakh]

You're misinterpreting the help. URL is correct. Look at your screenshot for the external URL. That's the one you give to your users.

The internalurl is wrong - that's why it isn't working. Set that to the server name such as server.domain.local not server.com.au.

Make sure you can ping server.domain.local from inside first. Then the autodiscover will work, download the oab and the shrimp's on the barbie.

 

[itechaust]

You're misinterpreting the help. URL is correct. Look at your screenshot for the external URL. That's the one you give to your users.

The internalurl is wrong - that's why it isn't working. Set that to the server name such as server.domain.local not server.com.au.

Make sure you can ping server.domain.local from inside first. Then the autodiscover will work, download the oab and the shrimp's on the barbie. "
Hmmm - maybe I didn't explain clearly. OWA is working okay with both URLs shown in the image so that's not the problem.

I want to change the external URL so the users don't know the IP address of the server. Is this possible?

 

[Zelandakh]

OWA might well be working but if the autodiscover end point isn't right, you'll get OAB issues.

Set the internal URL to the internal URL of the server.
Set the external URL to the working external FQDN of the server remote.domain.com.au or whatever.

Ensure that the certificates are working correctly with no pop ups in OWA. Then your OAB will start working.

 

[itechaust]

I tried to ping the domain but it can't find the server. I used the details from "full computer name" field in the attached image. This in the form of SERVERNAME.domain.local Was this what you meant?

 

[Zelandakh]

I'm now confused. You said that the URL includes an IP address and now you're saying it works fine?

When you say you can't ping the domain, are you inside the LAN? If so, you may not have a split brain so that could be why it fails. I can't now see the PDF as it won't load so I can't check anything but yes, servername.domain.local is an example of an fqdn. However that is only for internal use.

 

[itechaust]

I'm not surprised that you're confused. I'm a beginner trying to make complex technology work with no knowledge of what I'm doing and trying to interpret help from an expert to make it happen. I REALLY appreciate your patience!!!

Let's start again from my current understanding.

Problem: OAB won't download to Outlook 2007 clients.
Solution: Get autodiscovery working correctly using these instructions -

"Set the internal URL to the internal URL of the server.
Set the external URL to the working external FQDN of the server remote.domain.com.au or whatever.
Ensure that the certificates are working correctly with no pop ups in OWA."

You also recommended that I ping the server internally first.

What I have done so far:
In the OWA properties box the Internal URL is shown as

https://remote.myinternetdomainname.com.au/owa/.

The External URL is shown as

https://nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn/owa/.

On my PC (which is on the LAN and connected to the domain) I opened the command window and typed ping myservername.mydomain.local using the details in the Full Computer Name field of the SBS server properties. I tried both all lower case and mixed case the same as in the properties. The result both times was an error message saying the address could not be found.

I also pinged the server by entering ping nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn using the External IP address from the OWA Properties box. The result was that the address was found OK.

I hope this clarifies things.

 

[Zelandakh]

OK, that explains a few things.

Let's go backwards a bit here. Your server internally is called servername. That's the netbios name. Login to it and go to Computer, right click that and choose properties. Look at full computer name. That's the internal name. That's the one you need to use to set on "Internal URL" as

https://<the

full computer name>/owa

Then you said you've got

https://remote.myinternetdomainname.com.au/owa.

If you are at home and type that in, do you land up at Outlook Web Access and can you then get into your email? If so, put that into the external URL. That is then the one you quote to your users.

From your desktop PC, don't ping the IP address, ping the full computer name. Does that come back ok?

We all started as beginners...

 

[itechaust]

You're a champion! The internal and external addresses are now set to your instructions.

I can log in to OWA via my personal iPhone browser and access all of my mail, as well as tools and options.

I still can't ping the server from my desktop PC. It returns "Ping request could not find host <myfullcomputername>. Please check the name and try again." I tried 3 times with the same result. Do I need to reboot the server? I may do that as a matter of course at close of business today.

 

[Zelandakh]

No, you don't need to do that. On your computer go to a command prompt. Type
ipconfig/all

In there is your IP address. Under that you'll see DNS server. Ensure that it is an internal one.

Go on that server and start up DNS manager. In there, open up the sub folders until you see mydomain.local or similar. If there name of the Exchange server in the list of servers? It ought to be.

 

[itechaust]

Results:
The IP address of DNS server is an internal one.
The Exchange Server is listed under DNS Servers\DNS\myservername.

From my desktop PC I pinged myservername instead of mydomain.local and it worked.

 

[Zelandakh]

Excellent, all done then.

 

[itechaust]

Not quite, I'm afraid. The OAB still won't download to the Outlook clients. I was poking around on the server and found this dialog box. Should this internal URL match the OWA internal URL?

 

[Zelandakh]

Yup - thought we'd covered that one. My bad. Now I see that we didn't :-(

It won't make a difference to the OAB but anyway.

If you go to Outlook and in send/receive do a download address book and untick the tick box, does it come down?

 

[itechaust]

Regrettably - no.

 

[Zelandakh]

OK, in OWA, do you see the new address book details?

 

[itechaust]

Yes I do. I see all of the address lists in Exchange, even system addresses such as Schedule+ Free Busy Information.