Outlook 2016 Offline Addressbook

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Outlook 2016 Offline Addressbook

Andreas 20

I am encountering an issue with the Offline Addressbook in Outlook while in cached mode. When I switch Outlook to offline mode, I am only able to access the global addresslist. Attempting to access „All rooms“ or „All contacts“ results in message indicating that these options are not available… This is a fresh Exchange 2019 installation. By the way, in the global addresslist all rooms, contacts etc. are included…

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Answer 1

Hi @Andreas ,

The interesting thing is that the global address list in Outlook works in offline mode and contains all the data. Only the address lists do not work.

By "Offline mode", do you mean you clicked this button?

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If so, sorry that I've misunderstood your situation in my reply earlier and thought you were asking about OAB in Exchange cached mode. My apologies...

Then when it comes to your scenario that the address lists cannot be accessed in "offline mode", this is actually the expected behavior.

When working in Exchange Cached mode, the Global Address List you see in Address Book is actually the Offline Address Book which has already been cached locally, this can be verified by selecting the global address list and click File > Properties, check the path of "the current server is" and you'll see it's a local path of your computer:

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While for the address lists you mentioned, they are hosted on the server and are not cached locally, so it's expected that you would get the error when working offline. Because "Work offline" means you are disconnected from the Exchange server, but these address lists are stored on the server and accessing them from Outlook client does require connectivity to the Exchange server.

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Hope the above information can be helpful.

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Andreas 20 Reputation points

2024-02-23T08:15:16.1633333+00:00

"Yes, I'm referring to the Outlook Offline mode. My issue is, when a user first uses Outlook in Cached mode in online mode (the user has never logged into the PC before) and clicks on 'Calendar', then 'New Meeting', then 'Invite Attendees', and then 'Rooms', the message pops up: 'The action cannot be completed because the offline address book is not available. Download a copy of the server address book'."

But I can not reproduce the error anymore.
The interesting thing is, when the user then clicks on 'Global Address List' and then back on 'All Rooms', everything works flawlessly. That happens only the first the the user logon. (the addressbook is downloaded in backgroup, I have seen the files)

Of course when I download the a

Answer 2

Yuki Sun-MSFT 41,376 Moderator

Hi @Andreas ,

This is a fresh Exchange 2019 installation.

Have you created new Offline Address Books or made any changes to the default one? Please try running the Exchange PowerShell command below to force updating the OAB:

Get-OfflineAddressBook | Update-OfflineAddressBook

Then manually download the OAB in Outlook client via Send/Receive > Send/Receive Groups > Download Address Book...:

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If the issue persists, navigate to "C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook", rename the folder name of "Offline Address Books" to "Offline Address Books.old", then restart Outlook and check the result.

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Andreas 20 Reputation points

2024-02-23T05:57:15.98+00:00

I have not changed the default one. But for a additional test I have created a new addressbook and point it to my user.
With the "default" one and the new one the issue is the same. I have also removed as you wrote the addressbook and created it again in Outlook. Error message before: "The address list cannot be displayed. The operation cannot be performed because the server connection is offline."

The interesting thing is that the global address list in Outlook works in offline mode and contains all the data. Only the address lists do not work.
Andreas 20 Reputation points

2024-02-23T06:19:55.6933333+00:00

When I create a new address list in Exchange, I can browse it in Outlook, but when I switch to offline mode, I‘ll get the same problem - can not view the addresses..

Answer 3

Andreas 20

Thank you for your Support!

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Outlook 2016 Offline Addressbook

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