Online Archives and Free/Busy data keeps disappearing from Outlook

Question

Hi all.

I run a small organization with about 100 users on Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 utilizing Exchange Online Archiving.

A few months ago, possibly corresponding with the big "Exchange Server Hack" patches that I installed, we started having intermittent problems with users' online archives going missing from their Outlook profiles and not being able to see other users free/busy data when scheduling meetings. Deleting and recreating their Outlook profile immediately restores the functionality, and it usually sticks, but some users have had the issue reoccur at random intervals - all other features appear to work correctly. I don't know exactly how many people have had the issue, because most users don't use their online archive or free busy data, all I know for sure is that it hasn't happened to all workstations. I try to get my users up and running as quick as possible and it hasn't happened to any of the workstations that I use, so I haven't really dived in deep to try and figure out what's wrong, but if anybody has any knowledge to spare, I'd love to hear it :)

Answer 1

So, I had an opportunity this week with a user who didn't need an immediate fix, so I just had an opportunity to actually investigate. Unfortunately I fixed it too quickly before I learned a whole lot.

The first thing I tried was examining the mailboxes of the affected user and my own account using MFCMAPI, but I couldn't find anything obvious, so I then tried the Outlook Repair setting under Account Settings / Email Accounts, and at first that didn't seem to work. it first failed to find any server settings, and I had to log in manually. It did not appear to fix anything. I tried running it again and it immediately came up as successful and the problems were all resolved.

I don't know whether it was the first attempt at the repair tool that fixed it, or the second. But I will try this again the next time I get another user with the issue, which probably won't be long.

My big question right now however, is there anyway to automate this repair procedure? A command line I can run which would do it automatically?

Answer 2

Hi @Richard Sims ,

Considering that it's a randomly occurred issue, I am afraid it might be difficult to troubleshoot and find the root cause. As per you concern about the Exchange security patches installed a few months ago, I tried searching around but haven't seen similar reports so far.

Given this situation, personally I'd suggest checking the things below and see if there would be any improvement or whether we can get more clues for further troubleshoot:

1. Are the users all running Outlook in Exchange cached mode? If this is the case, try switching to Exchange Online mode and monitor for some time to see how it goes.
2. Make sure both the Exchange server and the users' Outlook client have been fully patched with all available updates.
3. Although it seems that the issue is more likely to be related to the Outlook client side based on the symptom that the issue can be immediately restored by recreating the Outlook profile, I'd still recommend using the Test E-Mail Autoconfiguration tool to make sure Outlook can successfully connect to the Autodiscover service when the issue occurs.

By the way, actually both Exchange 2010 and Office 2010 have already hit End of Life and are no longer supported, so it's highly recommended to plan to upgrade your Exchange Environment and Office clients to a supported level.

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Answer 3

So...

I've used the "Repair" method a couple of times now, and it's interesting what happens. I always have to click repair, then it it tries to do it and comes up with a login box for the account and I hit cancel. Then I restart outlook and hit repair again, this time it immediately works and says you have to restart outlook. When I restart outlook, the archive mailbox is there.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. The archive mailbox will usually disappear usually after about a minute, right in front of my eyes. I then repeat the process over again, and it may take a few times through and then it sticks (don't know how permanent it will be). It has taken 2 attempts up to about 5 attempts.

I just did this with a user and it was the longest number attempts, like around 5, and I decided I was going to capture the outlook profile out of the registry when it was working and not working, and so I did. I captured it when it was "broken", after I fixed it, and after an outlook restart when it was "Working". Aside from some small changes between the profiles, the biggest difference is that on the fixed and working captures there is an entire extra key under the profile which contains the mapping to the archive guid. Unfortunately this key is a random number, so it's not the same between profiles.

So basically it seems that whenever this issue happens it deletes this registry key from the outlook profile in the registry and is then no longer opening the archive mailbox.

Anybody have any ideas as to what may be causing this?