Out of Office Assistant

[The2ndOmen]

A few of my users are getting an error when trying to use the out of office assistant. I am a little baffled because they are on seperate exchange servers. When they go to run the out of office assistant a message box pops up saying" The Out Of Office Assistant could not be displayed. A required action was not successful due to an unspecified error." When you click ok on this dialog box you get the following message. "System resources are critically low. Close some windows." I have tried this from different versions of outlook(From 2000 right to 2003). It seems to be mailbox specific. If I create a different profile on a different machine it will still not work if it was working before. I am running exchange 2000 SP3 on Windows 2000 SP4. This problem seems to have appeared a week or two ago. Can anyone tell me how the out of office assistant works so I can see where to start on this problem.

 

[AdmanOK]

I'm having the same problem with a few users, including myself. I don't know what is causing it.

 

[Jerbo95]

I am not sure what is causing this either but you can work around it because in our instance it still works in OWA.

 

[PalmerAK]

Same problem here. This is quite strange as it appears to be only happening to some users and we only started noticeing it very recently.

We are also using office 2002 and 2003 and have tried all the things The2ndOmen has tried. No luck.

and yes it still works in OWA

May have to resort to contacting the big "M" soon.

 

[PalmerAK]

Short update:
I believe I have isolated the problem to the user's AD account and not an outlook client side issue.

I can log in as problem user on my laptop, get the error described above. I then log into the same laptop using my user account and Out of Office Assistant works fine.

 

[AdmanOK]

Yeah it does appear to be related to the user account. I can log in at any computer and use any version of Outlook from 97 - 2003 and still get the same error... I have no idea what is causing it.

 

[jbud]

The Out-of-Office Assistant simply implements mailbox rules. When rules get corrupted (a frequent issue), problems like this appear. Using OWA is a known work-around for mailbox rules problems. Microsoft has a series of kb articles for fixing rules problems that should help with this. For one specific to the Out-Of-Office Assistant:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=248709

For more on rules cleanup:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;174045

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320022&Product=exch2k

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;262482&Product=exch2k

 

[AdmanOK]

I'll try those links out... I just tried moving the mailbox from one server to another thinking that the process of recreating it might fix it, but no such luck.

 

[CCITChuck]

Try this link remembering to backup the registry before preforming the task.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823472

 

[PapaKnows]

I am having the same issue on my Exchange 5.5 server. I have tried to recreate the registry key for Out of Office however it did not work. Has anyone had any luck?

 

[mzenzer]

Not to hijack this thread, but rather then start a new one I thought I'd ask here. Does anyone have a link to an article on how to configure, from top to bottom, an out of office reply in Exchange 2000?

I know how in Exchange 5.5, and on the client side as well, but so far my efforts have not been rewarded in Exchange 2000. I know it's just some stupid little setting that I'm overlooking.

Thanks for the help!

Mike

 

[Davetoo]

Out of Office replies are set on the client, not on Exchange.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[RobinTree]

Just upgrade from Office 2000 to Office 2003 and received the same error. While using Office 2000 I never saw this error. After a conversion to Windows XP and a new fresh load of Office 2003 this error start to appear. I will take CCITChuck advice and check the registry. Thanks to all...

 

[1287]

I had the same problem and I found a Microsoft support page that helped tramendously. Best of luck Doug,

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=248709

*From URL at Microsoft Support website*
*SYMPTOMS
When you attempt to use the Out of Office Assistant, you receive the following error messages:

-The Out of Office assistant cannot be displayed.

-The client operation failed.

*CAUSE
Out of Office Assistant creates a set of two rules in the Inbox subtree. The first contains a Message Class of IPM.Note.Rules.Oof.Template.MicrosoftMessage with a field, PT_String8=MSFT:TDX OOF Rules. The other rule contains a Message Class of IPM.Note.Rules.OoFTemplate.Microsoft. One or both of these rules are corrupted or are not synchronized with the OOF-enabled indicator.

*RESOLUTION
Use the Mdbvue32 utility from the Exchange Server 5.5 CD-ROM or the Exchange Server 5.0 Resource Kit to delete the two entries for Out of Office.

1.Start Mdbvu32.exe.
2.Click MAPI_EXPLICIT_PROFILE, and then click OK.
3.Click the MAPI profile for the mailbox that you want to correct.
4.From the MDB menu, click Open Message Store.
5.Click Mailbox - username in the list, and then click Open.
6.On the MDB menu, click Open Root Folder.
7.Under Child Folders, double-click Top of Information Store.
8.Under Child Folders, double-click Inbox.
9.Examine each row of entries that appear under Associated Messages in Fld by double-clicking the CB items one at a time. You are looking for two items that have the following message properties:
The item that contains a message property Ox65EB that displays OOF Rules.
The items that contain a message property PR_MESSAGE_CLASS that displays IPM.Note.Rules.OofTemplate.Microsoft.
These are your Out of Office Assistant rules and your Out of Office Assistant template. Both must be removed by using steps 10 through 14.
10. Select both CB: values.

To do so, press and hold down CTRL while you click both CB values under Associated Messages in Fld.
11 In the Operations Available list, click lpFld-> DeleteMessages in the messages that are selected.
12.Click Call Function, and then click OK.
13.In the MAPI_FOLDER Inbox => Delete Messages dialog box, click OK.
14.Continue to close the dialog boxes, and then quit the Mdbvue32 utility. You must now reset the Out of Office message that you want in Outlook.