One Azure VM terminal server user account cannot connect with Outlook 365 desktop app

Question

Reposting here after asked to move to this forum...
We have an Azure virtual machine terminal server running MS Datacenter 2016. Users log in via RDP with their Microsoft Azure accounts. They have E3 licenses. Recently, a single user started having issues with Outlook desktop. I am not able to create a new mail profile for her while logged into the server as her or when logged in with the admin account. I have gotten these errors:
-Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. Microsoft Exchange is currently busy.

-Outlook cannot log on. Verify you are connected to the network and are using the proper server and mailbox name. The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action.

If I try to set up a mail profile for her account on a regular computer, it works.
I set up a new account for a different employee on the same server and it worked.

I tried creating an alias for her account and using that to set up a mail profile on the terminal server, and it did not work (while logged in as her or as the admin account).

I tried editing the registry by renaming "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook" to Outlook1 or something similar multiple times… logged out of her account on the server and back on, etc. It did not help.

I ran Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer with modern authentication on her account, and it fails at "Testing MAPI over HTTP connectivity to server outlook.office365.com." I don't know if this is the cause of the problem, but here is part of the output:
Testing the address book "Check Name" operation for user [xxx@****] against server outlook.office365.com.

An error occurred while attempting to resolve the name.

Additional Details

A protocol layer error occured. HttpStatusCode: 500
Failure LID: 47372
Failure Information:

REQUEST ...

POST /mapi/nspi/?mailboxId=[removed] HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
User-Agent: MapiHttpClient
Authorization: Bearer [truncated] ...
ClientApplication: MapiHttpClient/ ... X-RequestType: Bind Host: outlook.office365.com Content-Length: 45
--- REQUEST BODY [+0.010] --- ..[BODY SIZE: 45] --- REQUEST SENT [+0.010] --- ###### RESPONSE [+0.239] ###### HTTP/1.1 500 request-id: ... X-RequestType: Bind x-ms-diagnostics: 2000007;reason="Type with name 'Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.VariantConfiguration.ABComparison.ILdapWriteABComparisonHelperSettings' is not found. Please check spelling and that necessary assembly is loaded in the AppDomain.";error_category="internal_error" ... X-FailureContext: BackEnd;500;;;;;
X-RequestType: Bind x-ms-diagnostics: 2000007;reason="Type with name 'Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Directory.VariantConfiguration.ABComparison.ILdapWriteABComparisonHelperSettings' is not found. Please check spelling and that necessary assembly is loaded in the AppDomain.";error_category="internal_error" ... error="invalid_token" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET HTTP Status Code: 500 InternalServerError

 

Answer 1

@ChristyZhang-MSFT ,

Do you mean that you add the new account in Outlook on the problematic user's computer?

I created a brand new user account for a completely different employee, logged into the same terminal server with the new account, and was able to set up Outlook for that new user. Same server, different Microsoft account.

Do you mean that you cannot create a new Outlook profile (Control Panel>Mail>Show Profiles>add)?

I cannot create a new Outlook profile for the one affected account on the terminal server, no matter who I'm logged into the server as. It will not work when logged in as that user, and if I log into the server as a different user and then try to add the affected account in Outlook as a new mail profile it will not add the affected account. The terminal server is a virtual machine hosted in Azure.
However, if I get on a completely different device, like my personal computer, and then try to create a mail profile for Outlook for the same affected user, it will connect and make the mail profile.

Answer 2

Exact same symptoms. 1 single user cannot open exchange mailbox through outlook. OWA fine. Remote connectivity analyzer fails at "Testing the MAPI Address Book endpoint on the Exchange server."

Answer 3

Okay... now it just started working again?

I'm not sure if someone at Microsoft did something in the background. I saw this happened to someone else who had the same issue a while back. Maybe something with a MS server?

Answer 4

Still having the same issue and with only 1 user who can't open exchange mailbox through outlook. OWA has worked the whole time.
Remote connectivity analyzer getting the same error - "Testing the MAPI Address Book endpoint on the Exchange server."

Answer 5

Hello,

I am working with a user in this exact situation: she was able to connect via Outlook yesterday, but starting today her outlook was giving several variations of "Cannot open information store" and "the exchange server is busy" error messages. After extensive troubleshooting, I ran the Remote Connectivity Analyzer and got the same error message, verbatim.