When I hit send/receive on a few clients the process will hang on "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" and will never finish? These same user can long on the OWA and send/receive just fine. The problem is that while it's hanging it can't go out and look for new email. Any thoughts?

What version of Exchange are you using? What does the client error say in the sync issues folder? Deli

Try rebuilding the Offline Address Book - go to ESM | Recipients | Offline Address List | right-mouse click on Default Offline Address Book and select Rebuild. Jason

Oh sorry I'm using exchange 2007. It's not happening to all just a few users.

Which version of outlook are the users using that are expieriencing problems? Did you configure Autodiscovery for Outlook 2007? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201695.aspx Deli

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. Autodicovery is configured and working well, for most clients.

So you are saying this is both a problem for Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003? Outlook 2007 => problem for some users? Outlook 2003 => Problem for some users? Have you created a public folder and configured public folder publishing for Outlook 2003 clients and earlier? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124351.aspx Can you find any errors in the Sync Issues folder in outlook and also post them here Deli

I would like to just fix the Outlook 2007 for now because I know I can upgrade the 2003 clients when I get a few mins. They don't get any errors but it just hangs and says, under progress processing. (This is when you click on Send/Receive Details).

Can you do the following: Right Click on the Outlook Systray Icon while holding down the CTRL key Select Test Email Auto Configuration... Unselect all Guessmart boxes Verify that the results display the correct information for internal and external URLs Deli

That all looked good. But when I look at the connection status by Right Clicking on the Outlook Systray Icon while holding down the CTRL key. It's says its connected to my DNS Server 5 times and my exchange box twice, should that be a issue?http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=32033&d=1193059376

It is normal that you connect to your DNS server with multiple connections as that is your Domain Controller! Exchange doesn't use a separate Directory it uses Active Directory Are you experiencing problems when users are internal and external? Can you post the result of the Email Autodiscovery Deli

Internal issue only so far. Autodiscover results are herehttp://www.tetongravity.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=32074&d=1193079712

Does your internal DNS resolve the mail.meridithnh.org to the exchange server that is hosting the CAS role? Did you try to set the internal URL to the same name as the other services? Deli

Does your internal DNS resolve the mail.meridithnh.org to the exchange server that is hosting the CAS role? No, it resovles the serever's name. Did you try to set the internal URL to the same name as the other services? No, should I if some internal users are ok?

You must also point your internal name to a CAS server! Deli

Deli Pro-Exchange wrote: You must also point your internal name to a CAS server! Deli Maybe I don't understand this question?

Can you ping the hostname listed in the url mail.meridithnh.org does resolve to the same address as the internal Exchangeserver name? Deli

Deli Pro-Exchange wrote: Can you ping the hostname listed in the url mail.meridithnh.org does resolve to the same address as the internal Exchangeserver name? DeliIf I ping mail.meredithnh.org I get the firewall IP. If I ping the server name I get the internal IP.

Then you must change your internal URL for the OAB to your sever name Deli

Deli Pro-Exchange wrote: Then you must change your internal URL for the OAB to your sever name Deli I think this worked I have only tested on one client so far but I'll mark it solved in a after I check a few more. Thank you.

I ran into this same problem and read several people's responses on this blog and others. Here is the issue as I have found it after quite a bit of testing. With Autodiscovery working properly and the OAB in good shape (urls are correct and it seems to work just fine when downloaded fresh), and the OAB having been rebuilt in Exchange 2007.... Outlook 2003 clients will pick up the changes just fine either when restarted or when one goes to tools> Send/Receive > Download Address Book. Outlook 2007 clients, however, will not pick up the changes in the OAB when restarted, and when the tools> Send/Receive> Download Address Book is used the Send and Receive will hang and never complete. HOWEVER, if you go into the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder and remove all the .oab files, then a restart your outlook, a fresh copy of the OAB is downloaded and changes are in there. There is some WMC (weird microsoft ***) going on with Outlook 2007 and the OAB.

I am having the same problem here, are there any other suggestions for this. Everything else seems to be working fine, my autodiscovery worked like a charm (much to my suprise ) and send/receive is working great aside from this hiccup... Is this a known problem? Thanks for any further tips!

I am also experience this same issue. My Outlook 2003 clients seem to work fine, but my 2007 clients still hang on trying to download the OAB. Did anyone ever resolve this issue?

My issue was simply that my OAB site in IIS wasnt using the self generated cert, after enabling this and installing it on the client machine it worked fine. I thought that this would have been checked by default, could have been a setting I blew past and unchecked but I digress... HTH for someone.

I had similar problem. This actually arose due to the fact I had mistakenly set the Default web Site directory with a HTTP redirect which applied to all subfolders including OAB. I did then rectify this by going into individual subfolders and unchecking Http Redirect from each sub folder, however unknowingly it created/modified a webconfig file under theOAB virtual directory. (you can explore it to see the file there) If you test your OAB url (for people with the issue), which is : http(s)://servername/oab/[code]/oab.xml you will get Error 500. Each time Outlook 2007 was trying to connect to get OAB, it was trying to read that webconfig file. I fixed this by changing the permissions on that webconfig file to allow everyone and the above error was done, and also my Outlook 2007 was downloading the OAB again! Now if the above fix did not fix your problem, you can temporarily effectively disable OAB by unticking Web Distribution of OAB and Public Folder Distribution in EMC under Organisation/Mailbox/Offline Address Book. Users will be able to do a send/reiceve without any errors/issues. However, if a new contact/user is added to your AD with exchange attributes, the clients will not be able to see this. I'm guessing if cached mode was also not used, issues would also occur if they tried using the GAL.

acidack, you are a lifesaver. I looked at the other webconfig files in the internet directories and noticed they all had 'Authenticated Users' with read permissions while the OAB one did not. Adding this group with read permissions solved the problem; Outlook 2007 users are no longer frozen on the 'Offline address book connecting to Microsoft Exchange" message. What caused this? I'm not sure. I was messing with the web settings trying to redirect people to OWA. Something I did must have caused this file to be re-created without the needed permissions.

Another here that your a life saver to. Bloody permissions on the OAB folders. Please note that OAB is listed in two places. Open it through IIS and browse the folder location of OAB. I set everyone to full, tested fine, then scaled back permissions to read only. I then search c:\program files\microsoft\exchange\ for oab folder and did the same there. All is well. Thanks heaps, been driving me crazy.

I concur! after rebuilding my OAB my IIS permissions got spanked as well. Thanks for the tip I was resolved in a matter of minutes even without having to do anything like IISRESET :-)Chad Solarz Sr. Tech Instructor Directions Training MCSA / MCSE / MCDST / MCT MCTS: Vista / exch 2k7 / server 2k8 / forefront MCITP: Vista / server 2k8

I'm having the same issue, but with only one user. The entire network is Office 2007 on a 2007 Exchange server. Its been mentioned in this thread that the problem was occuring with permissions in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\OAB, so when I checked there, there were ZERO files. All the other folders in clientaccess like owa, etc have files. Anyone know how to get the web.config into OAB, or some other way to fix this?

This is exactly what happened to me and your answer fixed it. Thanks!

a) I tried deleting files as mentioned in pathLocal Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\*.oab b) Tools->Send Receive Settings, untick the checkbox of Download offline address book c) restart Outlook 2007 d) let the send/receive complete first time after restart of outlook, post that outlook will not take time in send/receive sync and hang at 'Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange'

Apparently, if we all ran the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, we would have known about this with a lot less sleuthing involved... :Phttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd535384(EXCHG.80).aspx

Actually, I think that isn't quite correct. Although running Microsoft's BPA tool will examine the permissions on the GUID folders under the OAB dir, it, for me at least, didn't check the OAB parent folder. Reading this TechNet article it states "The Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer examines security permissions on the %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange\ClientAccess\OAB\<GUID>". Again, I only tested this with my Exchange 2007 server and it didn't display any errors regarding permissions on the OAB dir. Thank you CoryS and AcidAck for the solution.

The autodiscovery information turned out to be the key to finding the root cause of my issue. In my case, none of the external clients using RPC over HTTP were able to synch the OAB. Looking into the autodiscover test, it became apparent that an external URL had never been configured for my OAB. Did that, restarted. Synch problem corrected. Thanks Deli Pro-Exchange! I think your troubleshooting steps were quite methodical and on the money! For anyone interested in HOW to do so, there's a technet article on it. The basic command is: Set-OABVirtualDirectory Paul

Hi,I found an solution here : http://www.confusedamused.com/notebook/oab-never-downloads-for-outlook-2007-clients-with-exchange-2007-on-server-2008/For me is good.Now Outlook download OAB and in IE with http(s)://server_name/OAB/GUID{1234567890}/oab.xml without prompt for authentication it display the content of the xml file.François.

Thanks acidack that fixed it for me. It was teh permissions on the web.config file. I had redirected the root folder so I am sure that is where it got messed up. I can't wait to find the next this redirecting the root broke. I already had to open a ticket with MS to fix the /Exchange legacy folder.

Had same issue with Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2010, added Authenticated Users / Read to Web.config file in OAB directory. Problem fixed, been driving me mad for weeks. Many Thanks..

Setting READ permissions to web.config has also fixed my problem with Outlook 2010 and Exchange 2010. Thanks.

I had the same problem of OAB not downloading in Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007 (SBS 2008). I went through all the above fixes but didn't fix the issue. But later I found out that its the authentication. Here is the authentication settings that worked for me: Autodiscover- SSL - ON ---->Authentication--Basic+Windows - Enabled. OAB - SSL - OFF ----> Authentication--Anonymous+Windows - Enabled. Hope this helps. It worked for me...

I had similar problem. This actually arose due to the fact I had mistakenly set the Default web Site directory with a HTTP redirect which applied to all subfolders including OAB. I did then rectify this by going into individual subfolders and unchecking Http Redirect from each sub folder, however unknowingly it created/modified a webconfig file under the OAB virtual directory. (you can explore it to see the file there) If you test your OAB url (for people with the issue), which is : http(s)://servername/oab/[code]/oab.xml you will get Error 500. Each time Outlook 2007 was trying to connect to get OAB, it was trying to read that webconfig file. I fixed this by changing the permissions on that webconfig file to allow everyone and the above error was done, and also my Outlook 2007 was downloading the OAB again! Now if the above fix did not fix your problem, you can temporarily effectively disable OAB by unticking Web Distribution of OAB and Public Folder Distribution in EMC under Organisation/Mailbox/Offline Address Book. Users will be able to do a send/reiceve without any errors/issues. However, if a new contact/user is added to your AD with exchange attributes, the clients will not be able to see this. I'm guessing if cached mode was also not used, issues would also occur if they tried using the GAL. Thank you acidack. Worked for me.

we are using Go Daddy and are getting the "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" error. Go Daddy didn't seem to have an answer and I'm not sure what to do on our end in order to fix the problem. We disabled the OAB download but it still seems to be searching for one

May I suggest that you open a new thread, post what you are trying to do, exactly what you are seeing, and all relevant details about how you are configured. I also would recommend that you try to fix the OAB download issue rather than disabling it. Your cached mode users won't like not having an OAB. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "keitherlam" wrote in message news:ca61bc61-0fe5-48d0-8e3c-63be63079917... we are using Go Daddy and are getting the "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" error. Go Daddy didn't seem to have an answer and I'm not sure what to do on our end in order to fix the problem. We disabled the OAB download but it still seems to be searching for one Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

MVP my @$$. Did you get certified to provide such crappy answers? Seems to me that the problem is very specific. "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" is hanging when send/receive is performed. What is the solution? Where's the MVP? Why is the MVP saying talking around the edges regarding solutions that end users have had to come up with on their own and don't know if they got lucky or struck gold? Why isn't a Microsoft technical support specialist addressing this issue head on? I am getting this error with BPOS and exchange and it doesn't look like it is going to be easy to fix... nor should I waste one second on it. Microsoft should provide a good answer and the associated solution to this... DodgeDodge

we are using Go Daddy and are getting the "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" error. Go Daddy didn't seem to have an answer and I'm not sure what to do on our end in order to fix the problem. We disabled the OAB download but it still seems to be searching for one Keitherlam, Did you ever find a resolution for this problem, I am also having this issue with Godaddy hosted exchange and it is creating some serious issues... Godaddy support doesnt seem to have a clue.

On Sun, 4 Jul 2010 20:18:22 +0000, kullnd wrote: >we are using Go Daddy and are getting the "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" error. Go Daddy didn't seem to have an answer and I'm not sure what to do on our end in order to fix the problem. We disabled the OAB download but it still seems to be searching for one > >Keitherlam, > >Did you ever find a resolution for this problem, I am also having this issue with Godaddy hosted exchange and it is creating some serious issues... Godaddy support doesnt seem to have a clue. If you feel that the problem is related to a cerificate, or the chain of trust, first make sure that the vorrect certificates are installec on the CAS. http://www.digicert.com/help/ is a good place to start. If the certificate and all root and intermediate certificates are correctly installed on the CAS you can move your scrutiny to the client machines. They may be missing the root and/or intermediate certificates for the issuing CA. The certificate vendor's web site should have inks to all the necessary certificates (both root and intermediate) that need to be installed on servers and clients. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Comments inline below. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "Dodge" wrote in message news:e3b0844b-0f25-469b-ac84-a31e290e9f30... MVP my @$$. Did you get certified to provide such crappy answers? >>> Actually, I'm not sure why I was awarded an MVP. They don't exactly tell us why. But I didn't provide a crappy answer, I suggested he open a new thread because this one has a lot of posts and I thought his particular problem would lost in here. Seems to me that the problem is very specific. "Offline address book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange" is hanging when send/receive is performed. >>> Then you solve the problem. What is the solution? >>> If I knew based on what is posted I would have answered the question. Where's the MVP? >>> Say what? Why is the MVP saying talking around the edges regarding solutions that end users have had to come up with on their own and don't know if they got lucky or struck gold? >>> Do I detect a hint of jealousy? Why isn't a Microsoft technical support specialist addressing this issue head on? >>> Because the poster did not call the support line and pay a fee. Then the support specialist would have asked all sorts of questions that haven't been answered in the thread. I am getting this error with BPOS and exchange and it doesn't look like it is going to be easy to fix... nor should I waste one second on it. >>> The why the ____ are you posting here? Trolling? Microsoft should provide a good answer and the associated solution to this... >>> I'm sure they would if the problem were clearly defined and the answer could be determined. Dodge DodgeEd Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Thank you for this. I adjusted the permissions on the web.config file and all is working. Thank you, Steve

The most useful information I found to resolve my problem was this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd535384(EXCHG.80).aspx We had recently migrated a few users to Exchange 2010 with a pool of CAS servers, the users on the 2010 server were unable to download their Offline Address Book (OAB). Send/Receive Hung on the OAB task and it would display that the Send/Recieve would be 50% complete and if left for long periods of time would sown 10% complete. In evaluating th e problem we were unable to Send/Receive -> Download Address Book... when making attempts to do so the Outlook client seemed to lock up. The way we resolved the issues is by following the steps in the Microsoft Article I list above. It had us make changes to the Permissions on the OAB folder on the CAS servers in our pool. For us on Windows 2008, Exchange 2010 the folder that needed to be adjusted was. %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\OAB I made the adjustments to the security permission on the OAB folder rather than its Sub-folders. I hope this help others who may have the same problem. Damian

The most useful information I found to resolve my problem was this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd535384(EXCHG.80).aspx We had recently migrated a few users to Exchange 2010 with a pool of CAS servers, the users on the 2010 server were unable to download their Offline Address Book (OAB). Send/Receive Hung on the OAB task and it would display that the Send/Recieve would be 50% complete and if left for long periods of time would sown 10% complete. In evaluating th e problem we were unable to Send/Receive -> Download Address Book... when making attempts to do so the Outlook client seemed to lock up. The way we resolved the issues is by following the steps in the Microsoft Article I list above. It had us make changes to the Permissions on the OAB folder on the CAS servers in our pool. For us on Windows 2008, Exchange 2010 the folder that needed to be adjusted was. %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\OAB I made the adjustments to the security permission on the OAB folder rather than its Sub-folders. I hope this help others who may have the same problem. Damian

Potential solution found here for hang up on "Offline Address Book Connecting to Microsoft Exchange". http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/change-offline-address-book-details-for-microsoft-exchange-server-e-mail-accounts-HA010117956.aspx Turn off Download offline address book if not needed. Not fancy, but solved my issues. Not sure if i need that on or not to function properly, but hasn't seemed to cause any troubles so far.

The most useful information I found to resolve my problem was this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd535384(EXCHG.80).aspx We had recently migrated a few users to Exchange 2010 with a pool of CAS servers, the users on the 2010 server were unable to download their Offline Address Book (OAB). Send/Receive Hung on the OAB task and it would display that the Send/Recieve would be 50% complete and if left for long periods of time would sown 10% complete. In evaluating th e problem we were unable to Send/Receive -> Download Address Book... when making attempts to do so the Outlook client seemed to lock up. The way we resolved the issues is by following the steps in the Microsoft Article I list above. It had us make changes to the Permissions on the OAB folder on the CAS servers in our pool. For us on Windows 2008, Exchange 2010 the folder that needed to be adjusted was. %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\OAB I made the adjustments to the security permission on the OAB folder rather than its Sub-folders. I hope this help others who may have the same problem. Damian Guys, I have tried fixing the permissions issue at the server and the problem remains. To be more specific: Is a client with Outlook 2007 and I have SBS 2008 that is Exchange 2007. The problem started happening after a crash with the client and I had to restore the whole partition from backup (from a week before). When I first got into the user's email, Outlook complained that the .ost file was too old and needed to be deleted... so, I did that and started downloading the recent .ost but now it hangs on the mentioned error about the OAB. I have tried deleting the .oab files and using /cleanprofile but it does the same thing. I don't really want to turn off the feature... there has to be a solution out there. I tried fixing permissions on the outlook folder also suspecting is related to that... but nothing. There is a <longalphanumericnumber>.mlog with 0 KB in the folder that gets created...

I had the same problem of OAB not downloading in Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007 (SBS 2008). I went through all the above fixes but didn't fix the issue. But later I found out that its the authentication. Here is the authentication settings that worked for me: Autodiscover- SSL - ON ---->Authentication--Basic+Windows - Enabled. OAB - SSL - OFF ----> Authentication--Anonymous+Windows - Enabled. Hope this helps. It worked for me... I haven't tried this.... because I can't find those options?.. Are those at the client? or at the server? Where at the server? Thanks.

If you are in Exchange 2007, then these settings can be seen in IIS (should be in Admin Tools) at the server. You expand the tree structure until you get to the folders in question. In the middle pane (Features View) there should be an icon for authentication. This is where you'll see those options. Check or uncheck as needed - but proceed cautiously.

Hi, I had the same issue and I cleared all oab files under the User Profile. C:\Users\xxxxxxxxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ & It worked, Cheers, Sutherson

I had similar problem. This actually arose due to the fact I had mistakenly set the Default web Site directory with a HTTP redirect which applied to all subfolders including OAB. I did then rectify this by going into individual subfolders and unchecking Http Redirect from each sub folder, however unknowingly it created/modified a webconfig file under the OAB virtual directory. (you can explore it to see the file there) If you test your OAB url (for people with the issue), which is : http(s)://servername/oab/[code]/oab.xml you will get Error 500. Each time Outlook 2007 was trying to connect to get OAB, it was trying to read that webconfig file. I fixed this by changing the permissions on that webconfig file to allow everyone and the above error was done, and also my Outlook 2007 was downloading the OAB again! Now if the above fix did not fix your problem, you can temporarily effectively disable OAB by unticking Web Distribution of OAB and Public Folder Distribution in EMC under Organisation/Mailbox/Offline Address Book. Users will be able to do a send/reiceve without any errors/issues. However, if a new contact/user is added to your AD with exchange attributes, the clients will not be able to see this. I'm guessing if cached mode was also not used, issues would also occur if they tried using the GAL. I'm also having this issue. However, the permissions are fine. I can browse the URL to OAB.xml in IE and it displays without errors. Also, this issue only occurs on one machine. When the user with this issue logs onto another machine, the issue is not present. This would indicate that it's a client problem rather than a permissions, profile, or server problem. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance. QC

acidack, you are superman! That's, outlook 2007 downloading OAB now OK ... :-)

My issue seems to have resolved itself. I don't know how or why. My server tends to do that a lot. I'm not complaining though :)

Exchange 2010, Outlook OAB stuck on Send/Receive 50%, never finishes. Very old thread here obviously, but...had this problem with Exchange 2010. Everything with Exchange was fine...depending upon how you look at it. The issue, it seems was with my DNS. I had a zone for mycompany.local. I did NOT have a zone for mycompany.com. You can certainly change the settings in Exchange to point to the local addresses. However, I found that by creating a small mycompany.com zone, and adding aliases that pointed to the mycompany.local hosts (as well as A records for any public IP addresses you need to resolve, like www.mycompany.com), I cured several issues. First, all of the URL's that I provide to people for use out in the world (like the OWA address) now function internally. Before they did not. For several reasons, this never really seemed like much of an issue to me, so I never addressed it. It also cleaned up some issues with certificate messages. To tell you the truth, I feel like a dunce for not doing this a long time ago, but as I said, it really wasn't an issue, because nobody really uses the external URL's when they're here... so it just didn't occur to me.

Hi. We had the same problem ( only a few users affected ). Turns out that the mail server needed to be in our PROXY exception list. This resolved OOO not working and meeting scheduler.

Had this issue with Exchaneg 2010 SP1. Everything was working fine until I set OWA redirection for an easier user experience. This was later removed to offload SSL to a 3rd party device and for whatever reason removing the IIS redirection appeared to have screwed the permissions on the OAB folder. Following the technet article and enabling authenticated users to have read access to the clientaccess\oab folder worked.