Note: the following problem applies to both Exchange 2007 and 2010.
An administrator needed help after installing Exchange 2010:
The install went smoothly, or so I thought. Once we started using the server, problems surfaced.
Out of Office doesn’t work. When you try to open it, it returns an error “Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. try again later.”
When I attempt to download the offline address book, I get a synchronization error: “Task ‘username@domain.com’ reported error (0x8004010f) : ‘The operation failed. An object cannot be found.’ A server (URL) could not be located.”
I’m not sure if its related, but setting up new profiles in Outlook often results in “The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action.”
Autodiscover services are configured, Outlook Anywhere is enabled and properly configured per TechNet.
The Exchange Web Service (EWS) is the web service that allows access to the Out of Office service. If either the internal or external URL for the EWS is missing or incorrect, OOF will fail and other services may not work as expected.
Using Exchange Management Shell, check the URLs assigned to the web service virtual directory using the Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command. If either the internal or external URL is missing or incorrect, set them using the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command.
Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory
Type or paste this line into Exchange Management Shell to check the EWS URLs
Get-webservicesvirtualdirectory | fl identity,internalurl,externalurl
If the server is configured correctly, the command returns results similar to the following, with URLs in both the InternalUrl and ExternalUrl fields.
Identity : Server_name\EWS (Default Web Site)
InternalUrl :
ExternalUrl :
Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory cmdlet
If the external URL is missing, set it using the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command:
Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "Server\EWS (Default Web Site)" -InternalURL -ExternalURL -BasicAuthentication:$true
Verify the server names are correct by running the following code again:
Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory | fl identity,internalurl,externalurl
(Remember to replace the server names in the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command with the correct server names for your organization.).
More Information
Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998810(EXCHG.140).aspx
Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997233(EXCHG.140).aspx
Overview of the Autodiscover Service
The required hotfix for Outlook 2007 is included in the update rollup for Outlook 2007, KB 939184: Description of the update rollup for Outlook 2007: June 27, 2007
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Last reviewed on Sep 12, 2011
After going through more websites and suggestions than I can remember, the solution to my problem of OOF not working was to reset the read only tick on “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ClientAccess\Autodiscover” folder . Removed the Read only, apply, it works.