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Outlook 2007 enable to connect to Exchange 2003

Hi All,

I have an outlook 2007 client running on Windows VISTA business edition. It has been running fine for 6 months. But stopped working late last week. The exchange server it is trying to connect is Exchange 2003 running on Windows SBS 2003.

On outlook startup the error comes "The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook mist be online or connected to complete this action". On pressing "OK" to this it comes up with a windows where it prompts to define exchange server and mailbox name.

I am able to ping to exchange server and there doesnt seem to be any changes in the system. I can connect to exchange using webmail thus isolating possibilities of problems with Mailbox.

Your help is much appreciated as I have already spent 16 hours on this problem and cant find anything.

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Jerry Solomon
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Most Outlook-Exchange issues are due to DNS issues.  Please check what the primary DNS server is set to on th eworkstation.  It should be the IP of the server.  If not, you can override the DNS setting, or modify your DHCP server.
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ASKER

I already checked that and it all seems to be fine.
I would then try to create a new Outlook profile, and see if that works--sometimes profiles go corrupt for no good reason.  this can be done by rt-clicking on the outlook icon from the start menu, and then goin to properties.  then click on "show profiles, creat a new one, and set it to prompt for a profile.  Once you try it and it works or doesn't you can change these settings back.
Jerry,

I went and flushed DNS cache using ipconfig /flushdns. It didnt make a difference.

Then I dropped the all outlook profiles on my PC and recreated a new one. It is now giving a different error "Microsoft Exchange is unavailable". I can ping to the server but cant connect using outlook.

Any thoughts?
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MrLonandB

If you go into the properties of the profile and identify the Exchange Server by IP Address, does Outlook convert it to the host name?

Suggest taking Outlook out of cached mode and restarting Outlook. If it still doesn't work, go ahead and give your machine a quick reboot for good measure. If still not working...

Give yourself a static IP address and DNS Server. Reboot and try again.
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Jerry Solomon
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