Hi

Recently migrated from exchange 2003 to exchange 2013 using a staging exchange 2010 server . Most things went well and starting to think about removing the staging server - however there is one issue that i cannot resolve, External users with Outlook 2010 or above accessing the new server cannot see any public folders visible in the folder view in outlook. Internal users can see the public folders and access them ok. This is a single namespace and server environment for exchange, so the external name matches the internal name (via split dns). Logging an external user onto an internal pc - they can view and access the public folders ok. Public folders are visible via OWA.

External outlook users have been configured to use outlook anywhere for accessing their mailboxes.

The public folders have all been migrated to the new server and the old PF's locked out.

What am i missing ?

Hi ,

Have to checked the outlook connections status on the client which is connecting from outside world  ? is that showing the connectivity to the public folders?

Same time what about the connections status for the internal outlook clients , does that connecting to exchange 2013 server ?

Hi

Silly question perhaps, but how would i check the connection ?

Regards

Roger

Hi ,

Please check the below mentioned link.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123650(v=exchg.65).aspx

thanks S.Nithyanandham,

Above link is informative..

Hi

So the internal outlook clients show a connection to the public folders, whereas the external clients do not show a connection to the public folders. Does this help ?

Regards

Roger

Hi , Please check the below mentioned link and it could help you on this issue. https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2839517?wa=wsignin1.0

Hi Roger,

Could be that your PF Mailboxes has an "internal" primarysmtpaddress assigned.
Please check with the following command:

Get-Mailbox -PublicFolder | ft Name,primarysmtpaddress -A

In addition, you should check the autodiscover services also, it could be caused the issue also:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/exchange/en-US/19a2e0c8-92b6-4e17-9475-11c37d8d55e2/change-publicfolderserver-value-in-autodiscover

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2788136/en-us

Best regards,

Hi, this is in reply to both Niko and S.N

Thansk both for the input. However looking S.N the KB article might be a solution but i don't see why internal clients are not affected. Niko i can confirm that the primary smtp address for the PF's are all external ones. The autodiscover values are all external ones as well. What i've noticed is that on the outlook connection status the connection to the public folders is to a differenet server guid address to that for the user mailboxes (the proxy address is the same though). At first i thought this might be a clue and wondered if this address was pointing to the old PF's on exchnage 2010 - however on testing from a client (ie create a test folder within the PF hierarchy) it turns up on the new exchnage 2013 serevr (well at least it shows in the exchange admin centre under the public folders).

Just to re-iterate the problem external outlook clients cannot see a public folder tree under the 'folders' option whereas this is there on internal clients, it's not that they cannot expand the tree - it's just that the tree is not there.

I,m tempted to get hold of one of the external client pc's create a vpn back to the internal network, join it to the domain and see if the outlook client then picks up the PF tree. Any suggestions ?

I'm happy to provide detailed outputs of diagnosis if you think this would help .

Regards

Roger

Hi

So further information, joining an affected pc to the domain and loggig in as a user on that domain, running through the outlook wizard to setup there outlook profile and the public folders show up, even though the settings for the outlook wizard appear the same as for setting up with outlook anywhere. The only difference i can think of that might be th eissue would either be some kind of permission thing or something that the outlook wizard does that is not reflected in the outlook anywhere settings. Does anybody have any suggestions that may help ?

Regards

Roger

Hi Roger,

Please check if the public folder mailbox SMTP address suffix matches the autodiscover domain name we published on Internet. If it doesn't match, change the public folder mailbox SMTP address. For example, the PF mailbox is pf1@contoso.local, while the external clients connect to Exchange server via autodiscover.contoso.com. Please change the PF Primary email address to pf1@contoso.com.

If the issue persists, please share snapshots of Test-Autoconfiguration from both an internal working client and an external non-working client with us:

=========================

1. Open the Outlook and press the CTRL key on your keyboard and right click the Outlook icon in the notification area of the Windows taskbar.
2. In the menu that appears, click Test E-mail AutoConfiguration.
3. Choose the desired auto-configuration methods with "Use Autodiscover", clear other selection.
4. Click Test.
5. Capture the screenshots of Result and log tab.
   

Thanks,

Jessie

• Marked as answer by Eric ZouZouMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, January 15, 2015 1:41 AM

Jessie

Thanks, will do, though it may be over the weekend now before i can do this.

Hi Roger,

Is there any update about this issue?

Thanks,

Jessie

Hi

Seem to have found the issue and resolved it. It looks like there was a missing external autodisover dns cname entry missing, so external lookups to autodiscover.domain.com failed. Adding this in fixed the issue, so thanks to everybody for their help, what got me looking in the right direction was the suggestion to compare the outlook connectivity internally and externally. Probably something i should have done from scratch to be honest.

• Marked as answer by Eric ZouZouMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, January 15, 2015 1:40 AM

Hi Roger 3769464,

Did you add the CNAME record to your internal DNS, or was this on your external ISP DNS records?

Thanks in advance.

Ian