Question

Connection to Microsoft Exchange unavailable issue

Asked by: giorgosy78

Hi all

We have setup a Windows 2008 server with Exchange 2007. I installed ssl certificate from Godaddy and enabled outlook anywhere.
Outlook 2003 users can connect without any problem but Outlook 2007 keeps poping up this "connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable.Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action"

I have tested this scenario on several computers and the result is always the same.

Any ideas what i should check for?

Thanks

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Asked On
2009-10-29 at 23:59:24ID24857249
Tags

Exchange 2007 - Outlook 207 - Outlook 2003

Topics

Internet Explorer Web Browser

,

Exchange Email Server

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Answers

 

by: MesthaPosted on 2009-10-30 at 00:23:49ID: 25700693

Start by testing the server using a test account and the Microsoft test site: https://testexchangeconnectivity.com/

Simon.

 

by: RancyPosted on 2009-10-30 at 00:47:12ID: 25700786

What if you do a Email Autotest configuration does the Autodiscover worka nd you see the URL's ????

 

by: giorgosy78Posted on 2009-10-30 at 01:42:03ID: 25701009

I think the problem might be with autodiscover because when i created the CSR from digicert i did not include the autodiscover.domain.com on the SAN section.

Does it matter it you think?

I have a A record for autodiscover on DNS on the local server but do you think i should have one on the external domain?

On the testexchangeconnectivity website it gives me error on the autodiscover. I shall create a CNAME record for autodiscover on Godaddy and see how it goes

 

by: RancyPosted on 2009-10-30 at 02:03:33ID: 25701115

Yeah surely it would matter .............

 

by: giorgosy78Posted on 2009-10-30 at 02:36:07ID: 25701320

Ok i guess i have to remove the certificate from the server and recreate it with autodiscover.domain.com in SAN

Out of curiosity my local domain is mydomain.local. In the SAN section what should i put for autodiscover? autodiscover.mydomain.local or autodiscover.domain.com?

Thanks

 

by: RancyPosted on 2009-10-30 at 06:27:20ID: 25702682

.local is only used for internal so it has to be .com also you might require a Authoritative Domain. As even mail-flow cannot work if a user has just the .local email address.

 

by: giorgosy78Posted on 2009-10-30 at 08:44:09ID: 25704080

I have done everything as you said. I rekey the certificate with autodiscover.domain.com and reinstalled it. Still i have the same issue.
I ve been trying for hours to find a solution on the net with no luck.Testexchangeconnectivity still gives error on autodiscovery section but on outlook with rpc over http everything is green. :(

 

by: Texas_BillyPosted on 2009-10-30 at 09:04:47ID: 25704306

I've seen this several times as well, on this board and in live production.  I have yet to see exchange 2007 outlook anywhere work properly with outlook 2007 if the server is in domain.local.  I've seen it work ok with oulook 2003, but with outlook 2007 I haven't been able to get it to work.  Outlook 2007 works fine if clients are local and making a non-rpc/https connection to exchange, but not rpc/https.  

With outlook 2007, as I understand it, the cert that outlook sees must match exactly with the url configured in the outlook client (i.e., the url to which you point rpc/https proxy).  I think that applies even to domain extension.  If one is .com and the server cert is .net, I don't think outlook anywhere is going to work.  

I don't pretend to know to a certainty that it can't work, but I've seen failure after failure and never seen one resolved.  I've gone to the trouble of tearing AD down, rebuilding it as domain.com, re-adding hosts, rebuilding exchange, putting the same cert back on the box, and voila, it's working.    I don't know if there is a good answer for Giorgosy, is what I'm saying.  Has anyone out there actually seen this work?  --TX

 

by: MesthaPosted on 2009-10-30 at 13:12:15ID: 25706411

Outlook is very picky.
Autodiscover will do everything for you, as long as you have configured the URLs correctly in Exchange, so it passes the correct information to the client.
However if the tests on the Microsoft site are working, that would tend to point to a connection issue.
Are you testing this inside or outside of your network?
Can you use OWA from the same client?

Simon.

 

by: giorgosy78Posted on 2009-11-03 at 20:51:15ID: 25736487

Finally i found the problem or the problems i may say.

1) I had to re-key my certificate because i did not include a space between the coma among the domains in my csr creation thus the autodiscover domain was not included at the beginning
2) I had to create another SRV record on the Godaddy DNS control panel as per this article http://www.webville.net/kb/Knowledge%20Base/Autodiscover.aspx
3) By typing only the netbios name of my exchange server on outlook 2003 i did not had any problems but with Outlook 2007 i had to type the FQDN (name.domain.local)

I hope this will help other admins to solve this issue too.

Thanks everyone
George

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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