Problem description
When you try to download the OAB using Menu Tools -> Send/Recive -> Download Address Book you don't see the name of OAB in the drop down list.
Diagnostics
Firstly you have to check if the Autodiscover is configured properly. You can use a Test E-mail AutoConfiguration wizard (Hold CTRL and right click the Outlook icon in the System Tray). You should see the list of URL addresses.
- If the Autodiscover return an error you have to configure this service correctly (the configuration of the Autodiscover is out of scope of this article)
- If the XML is displayed you need to find the OAB URL that looks similar to: https://yourservername.yourdomain.tlddomain/oab/guidnumber. Notice: The OAB address can be found in both "Protocol: Exchange RPC" and "Protocol Exchange HTTP" sections. The first one is for internal clients who are accessing the OAB from LAN and the second is for external clients who are accessing the OAB from the Internet.
- If one of the OAB URLs is empty or wrong, correct the configuration using set-OABVritualDirectory cmdlet.
- If everything is right then copy the OAB URL and try to open it using your Web Browser
- You probably will see the error 500 - Internal Server Error (Figure 1)
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Figure 1 |
In this situation check the following settings:
- Is the Web-Based distribution enabled? Organization Configuration -> Mailbox -> Offline Address Book tab -> display your OAB Properties -> Distribution tab -> Enable Web-Based distribution must be enabled. There has to be at least one Client Access Server on the list. If the settings are correct go to the next point.
- Using IIS Manager Console check if an OAB subfolder exists and contains a folder which name is a GUID. You should see a lot of files in this GUID subfolder. Check this on each CAS.
- Have you created the redirection to simplify the Outlook Web App URL, like in this article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998359.aspx? If yes go to the next point.
- Did you remove the redirection from virtual folders? If yes go to the solution.
Solution
When you configure Http Redirection a web.config file is created in the OAB directory. This file has incorrect permissions. Assign Read and Read & Execute permission to Autheticated Users group then restart IIS using iisreset /noforce.
Now you can try to download the OAB using Outlook. It may be required to download it twice because sometimes the name of the OAB doesn't appear at first try.
Now you can try to download the OAB using Outlook. It may be required to download it twice because sometimes the name of the OAB doesn't appear at first try.
Notice: When you are trying to open the OAB URL from Web Browser you will get "403 - Forbidden: Access is denied" error (Figure 2). This is normal. Your OAB is configured properly.
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Figure 2 |
67 comments:
You sir, are a god among men. You don't realize how much of a head-ache you just saved me.
Thanks!
There is almost no information on this particular cause for OAB issues out on Google. This fixed my issue right away. Worth noting, I did not have to restart IIS.
THANK YOU!!!
Great Job,
4 hours of searching then I found your article. 4 Minutes later all resolved.
HI,
this works fine for a hour or so but then i'm finding the the permissions reset and the authenticated users group no longer has permissions again. Any idea why?
Mike
Thank you for your comment Mike. Unfortunately I have no idea why the permissions reset automatically after an hour. I have used this procedure many times and it worked for me permanently. Is there any service running which may change the permissions?
Great information - saved me hours of diagnostic work.
Great article, thanks for writing this one up.
Awesome article. It helped me resolved the OAB download issue right away!
Thank you. you saved me from a day of troubleshoting
Fantastic article. Fix my OAB download.
Thank you so much for this article, helped me heaps.
Great information. It solved our problem
Worked like a charm and saved us lots of time troubleshooting. Many thanks.
Many thanks. Right on the money!
Thanks! Worked here, too.
Dear Friend,
Thanks for sharing this info with the Exchange community. Greatly appreciated. After spending hours on this issue, I came across your article and it resolved the issue. AS mentioned by somebody else here, I did not have to restart IIS at all to make it work
Thanks again Buddy!
They should erect a statue of you in Redmond!
This issue had me scratching my head until I read your post.
THANK YOU!!!!
I don't normally comment on stuff, but I had to take the time and say thank you because you just saved me from throwing my laptop out the window :)
THANK YOU!
Great post - helped me also. Thank you!
Thanks Marcin,
Something to note is the redirect is kind of a hack and MS doesn't support it that well. If you run Exchange updates you'll find that either the redirect doesn't work anymore or you have to apply the security perms to web.config again or both.
Thanks again for the article,
JC
You are a master, thanks a lot¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
Working as a consultant and engage with client to troubleshoot OAB tried everything but no luck and after consult with this post and follow step by step procedures, issue was resolved!!
Friend, Literally, i have no words to thanks.
Syed Atif
Thank you! Works perfectly.
Great article. Help with diagnosis excellent and fix is spot on.
You are the man, I spent 6 hours working on this and then came accross your article and it worked perfectly!
Lunch is on me!
Thank you so much! After moving to exchange 2010 after 1 year you have solved my issue!!!
thank you so much -
such a life saver - very organized steps
This one solved our issues after several days of frustration. Great post...dzięki!
Thank you! Permission change solved the issue this time.
A BIG thanks from me as well. Spent ages looking for a fix until your article was found.
I had to add Authenticate Users R,W permissions to the top level directory of Exchange. So at c:\program files\Microsoft\Exchange\V14, it had authenticated users listed. However it was not applied to all folders and sub folders, it was only applied to folders. I added apply to all folders and sub folders. The permissions stayed.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank You!! This was absolutely correct!
Thanks for this! Resolved in 3 minutes. Had to restart IIS unlike some others.
Thank you very much!
good, issue resolved, i only wonder how Marcin get to solution
The only solution that worked for me. Thank you so much for posting this.
Very glad that I found this article. The permissions on the Web.config fixed it right up. I'd have never found that. Thank you.
Tks man you solve my problem.
Awesome. We entirely scratched our head to find a solution on this. Finally this settings fixed the issue. Thanks for this.
Well, that just saved us a ton of grief. Thanks!
Another satified customer, means IT Admin :) thanks Marcin for this solution!
WHAT AN ABSOLUTE LEGEND!!!!! fixed in 2 minutes.
Worked great! Thanks!
Wow, just like everyone else...I spent hours trying to figure this out and this blog posting was spot on. Thank you so much
I've spent DAYS trying to figure this out. I never thought to the Outlook Test AutoConfiguration! Thanks!
Awesome! Worked for me as well. Saved many hours of troubleshooting.
Your a Genius Man
Saved me many hours.
Thanks a lot!
Thanks! This was awesomely helpful.
Thank you so much for this. Never thought to check the permissions of the file.
What happens if there is an empty OAB folder?
Very helpful. Thank you - it fixed my problem with OAB.
Been scratching my head for days about this. 5min later all sorted.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
OMG, this worked like a charm.
Thank you sooooo much.
Fantastic!
THANK YOU for the great article from Ukraine!!!
Marcin, you beautiful human beeing!
Good lord, this took me a day to troubleshoot, two weeks ago the actual GUID folder lost the same permissions for a dark and mysterious reason.
Thank you SO very much!
In case you still get to read this, adding to the post that it might take a little while to function via outlook might help some more people, I got an "object not found" error on my first couple of tests :P.
Cheers and all the best!
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your comment. I will update the post as you suggested. I am glad that this old post still helps people.
You da man!! Added Authenticated Users with read and execute permissions and now Outlook GAL updating like a boss!!!!
And while this article is the best I've seen, can we please all get together and march on Microsoft HQ with fire and pitchforks demanding they toss the idiot out on his ass to face our wrath for making offline address books this incredibly anal to support?
Many Thanks!!! This article was perfect!!!
Thank you much this solved me to not to recreate OAB again
Assign Read and Read & Execute permission to Autheticated Users
Thanks so much, I trawled through loads of forums threads about similar issues but none of the other solutions worked for me.
Thanks
Scott
I spoke too soon, this was the only thing that worked but then after 10 minutes I started to get a different error:
Task name@domain.com reported error [0x80190194] The operation failed
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Scott
This saved me a lot of time. Thank you!
Work for me! Thank You!
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