Address Lists Intermittently Slow to Appear in Outlook 2010 Clients

Hello.  My organisation has one forest containing two domains.  The two domains correspond to two different geographical locations.

In the domain I manage, I have two Exchange 2013 CU5 Standard servers in a DAG.  Both servers have both the CAS and Mailbox roles installed.   The servers are running Server 2012 Standard.  The two servers are on different subnets.  One server, which is usually our active mailbox server, is at our primary data centre.  The other server is at a standby data centre.  The two sites are separated by a WAN link. 

Our clients are at the primary data centre.  They are on their own subnet.  The clients run Outlook 2010 on Windows 7 Professional. 

Exchange 2013 was deployed in my domain for about a year before the other domain began their deployment.  During my deployment, the other domain had one Exchange 2007 server.  They still have that server, as well as two Exchange 2013 CU7 servers in a DAG.

Several months ago, a few clients reported that they intermittently encountered delays of at least 30-90 seconds for the Global Address list to appear when they clicked on To or CC in a new e-mail message or an existing message they wanted to forward.  This issue arose during the time at which the other domain was doing their Exchange 2013 deployment, but that may be a coincidence.

I have been able to determine that this issue usually happens the first time the user does this in their Outlook session.  After that, the address list appears instantly.  If Outlook is closed, and then restarted, the address list will again be slow to appear when the users attempt to use it.

Our organisation uses Outlook in online mode.  I have tried Exchange cached mode, but that did not make any difference for me.  Because an issue was previously encountered when cached mode was tried, management in my organisation is opposed to using it.

If you have any insights into the cause of this issue, and how to resolve it, please share them with me.  Thanks.

June 8th, 2015 4:11pm

Make sure that the offline address book has the virtual directories in the other site configured for web publishing.  Or you can make sure that all servers serve up the OAB by using setting Set-OfflineAddressBook -GlobalWebDistributionEnabled:$True.

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June 8th, 2015 7:51pm

Hi,

Does  the issue occur on OWA?

I suggest you can check if OWA has this issue to determine whether the issue is related to Outlook side.

Based on my knowledge, access GAL could be related to your net speed. You should check your network.

Then please try to download OAB to check if the issue persists on outlook cache mode.

If it doesnt work, please re-create a new profile to test on problematic client side.

For detailed information, please refer to the below link  :

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2746896

Best Regards,

David 

June 9th, 2015 5:50am

Hi Ed.  Thanks for the response.  Can you please clarify what you mean. I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with how to check virtual directory settings on an address book.  Thanks.
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June 9th, 2015 2:29pm

Hello David.  Thanks for getting back to me.  OWA for Exchange 2013 defaults to my personal contacts rather than to the GAL, and there does not appear to be a way to change that.  As a result, tesing through OWA is not providing me with valid results.

If the issue is network speed, shouldn't users experience this issue every time they click on To or CC to bring up the address list?

When you say "outlook cache mode", are you referring to Exchange cached mode?  If so, I tried that, and it made no difference.

If you have any more suggestions,please do not hesitate to post them.  If I haven't already tried them, I gladly will!!  Thanks!!

June 9th, 2015 4:06pm

If you are in online mode or are accessing the Address Lists ( versus a cached OAB) on the Outlook client, this is a known issue with CU5. This was fixed in CU6, but you really should be at CU8 regardless as CU5/6 are no longer supported.

Here is the bug you are running into ( fixed in CU6):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2986779

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June 9th, 2015 4:41pm

Hi,

I agree with Andy.Please try to update the latest patch by using the following link.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46373 

Then check whether the issue persists.

Regards,

David 

June 9th, 2015 9:16pm

Look at the documentation of the Set-OfflineAddressBook cmdlet.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996330(v=exchg.141).aspx

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June 9th, 2015 9:24pm

Hi Andy.  Thank you very much for the response.  Generally speaking, I agree with your suggestion of installing the most recent updates possible.  My biggest obstacle to that has been the fact that there is always delay between the time when the most recent CU becomes available, and when our backup software officially supports backing up Exchange with that particular CU.  I am, however, planning to install updates in the very near future.

The link that you provided appears to deal with a completely separate issue.  There is no mention of address lists in it at all.  Please provide me with more information about how the document you have identified is related to the problem I am trying to solve.  Thanks!!
June 10th, 2015 10:32am

Hi Andy.  Thank you very much for the response.  Generally speaking, I agree with your suggestion of installing the most recent updates possible.  My biggest obstacle to that has been the fact that there is always delay between the time when the most recent CU becomes available, and when our backup software officially supports backing up Exchange with that particular CU.  I am, however, planning to install updates in the very near future.

The link that you provided appears to deal with a completely separate issue.  There is no mention of address lists in it at all.  Please provide me with more information about how the document you have identified is related to the problem I am trying to solve.  Thanks!!

Its the same, trust me. I had the same issue. :) We held off on CU5 once I discovered it and waited for CU6 at the time. When you access Address Lists in Outlook, you are in online mode and not using the cached OAB. In a multi domain forest, you are seeing that delay. Once the address list pops up, it works quickly yes? At least until you close and re-open Outlook...

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June 10th, 2015 11:01am

You were right Andy.  Upgrading from CU5 to CU7 resolved the issue.  Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction!!
June 29th, 2015 1:26pm

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