Requesting data from Microsoft Exchange...

[ChipToast]

I've tried searching for this issue in the MS knowledgebase with no luck.

I receive this pop up message on a daily bases from my home Exchange server.

"Outlook is retrieving data from th4e Microsoft Exchange server "Server1". You can cancel the request or minimuze this message to the Windows taskbar until Outlook cloeses the message automatically"

Under this message there is a status bar which reaches the same point and stops.

Anyone fimilar with this issue?

Many Thanks for your help,
MC

 

I see that often with one of my client who accesses his email through a VPN but never locally. This client has a huge mailbox. It doesn't seem to cause any problems in this case and eventually does recontact the exchange server.

 

[maxxheight]

Are you using Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP?

Mark

 

[ChipToast]

I'm using Outlook XP.

I currently have the server on a wireless network, and although this has not happend in the past, I think it might be related (all pings report 1ms reply).

 

[maxxheight]

If you are on an 802.11b network, then that may be the root cause of your problem. You should check the throughput and see how much data you are actually pushing over the connection. I would also try running an ethernet cable to one of the problem PC's to see if that fixes the issue.

Another problem I have seen is servers with a gig ethernet card connected to a 100 or 10 meg hub or switch. Although it should not make a difference, it seems that the negotiation of the gig card to the network takes a small but noticable amount of time. I have even tried hard coding the media rate to 100 megs on some of these gig cards but it does not make a difference and I always end up just using a 100 meg card and that solves the problem.

Other thing to think about if you are using Exchange 2003. Each 2003 cal includes a license for one copy of Outlook 2003 at no additional charge. If you were to set up Outlook 2003 on the client machine with the problem and use cached mode as well as turning off the notifications of the client updating to the server, then you would be good to go as well. This is more of a band aid though, and not a real fix.

Just some thoughts. Hope one of them helps.

Mark

 

[johnny99]

In our installation I haven't seen this on Exchange 2003, but it was faily common when we where running Exchange 5.5

If I remember right it's just an information from Outlook saying it's waiting for data from Exchange.

We saw this mostly when the user had very large inboxes with a lot of items.
I think the problem occured when the mailbox was re-indexed by Exchange or Outlook.

Problem was basicly a performance issue.

/johnny

 

[belpepsi]

This was quite a prevalent issue with clients on Outlook 2002 prior to our upgrade from Exchange 5.5 to 2003. We did pin it down to VAPI/MAPI in our case with Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition. The Outlook client will request data from the server to ensure an attachment is virus free. Once we upgraded to Exchange 2003 and Symantec version 8.6 this issue disappeared, because the latest version of Symantec Antivirus scans the mailboxes for virus attachments and all new incoming emails. Keeps a list and will rescan as virus definition updates are made. This keeps the Request for Data from happening.
I know this is only one case but it did stop every instance of this issue from occurring.

 

[marko2002]

You might want to check that the 'Used Cache Exchange Mode' isn't enabled as this could cause the message you describe to stay visible for a length of time . .

On client - MS Office Outlook > Tools > Email Accounts > Next > Change and underneath the exchange server name untick the box (if ticked).

Hope this might be of some use to you

 

[thebook]

I get this a lot as well. Using Outlook 2003 with Exchange 2003. We connect to it via VPN over T1 but when we get the "Outlook is retrieving..." popup it actually hangs Outlook for at least 10 sec.

I do notice that the server name which is displayed in the popup sometime changes from one DC/GC to another (all local to Exchange server) and it is displayed as FQDN.

I think it has something to do with DC/GC lookups taking to long over the VPN but can't say for sure. Is there any way to tune Exchange 2003 to work with Outlook better over VPN? Without going RPC over HTTP or cached mode?

Thanks.

 

[tmckeown]

A friendly bump on this topic. I'm interested in any answers.

 

[Xanaxo]

There can be a single cause or several related causes for this particular dialog box. The "Requesting data from Exchange server..." dialog appears when Outlook 2002 or 2003 has not received a server response to a request for 5 seconds or more. So anything that could cause a response to be delayed may be suspect. Some configuration options in Outlook can cause more requests to be generated so the chances of a 5 second delay rise just because of the frequency of requests. Networking issues may affect the time the response takes to be returned and performance issues on the server can cause slower responses.

The fact that these "Requesting dialog from server..." dialogs appear is not always a sign of a persistent issue. If they appear once a month for a second or two that could possibly be normal. If they appear everyday for seconds to minutes at a time then there is something causing latency in the client receiving a response to an outstanding server request.

The article below is a good place to start.

839862 How to troubleshoot the RPC Cancel Request dialog box in Outlook 2003 or

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=839862

Steven Parent [MSFT]