Outlook uses Autodiscover URL left from decommissioned Exchange server

Question

Hi All,

In the production environment there was an Exchange Server 2013 server.

Users used to work and still work on terminal servers.

Few years ago emails were migrated to Microsoft 365 (users database as synced with Azure AD Sync) and the Exchange Server 2013 server was decommissioned.

While the company stayed on Microsoft Office 2013 there were no issues.

However recently Microsoft Office 2013 was replaced with Microsoft 365 and the fun has began.

Now randomly users unable to launch Outlook and get this error.

Also, when I recreate Outlook profile I can see this.

In other words Outlook tries to use old Autodiscover URL.

Is my theory right and Outlook stop working because of old Autodiscover URL?

If yes could you please help me to clean out Active Directory Directory Services information left from old Exchange Server.

Answer 1

The right way to clean up the Active Directory Schema is to uninstall the Exchange Server smoothly to ensure that all the related entries in the schema are cleaned and removed correctly. 

Below is the article for help - Remove a dead Exchange Server from Active Directory

Answer 2

Hi Amit Singh,

Unfortunately, the Exchange Server is gone now.

I will try to follow the recommendations in your link.

Thank you.

Answer 3

Hi @ITGeek_82 ,

If you enter the following, do you see the old URL in the list? If you do, then change it to a valid URL with Set-ClientAccessServer.

Get-ClientAccessServer | FT Name,AutodiscoverServiceInternalUri

You could refer to this similar case: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ba6f8e40-b3d0-4560-a560-6a13099c577e/autodiscover-still-picking-up-decommissioned-exchange-server

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Answer 4

Hi @Jame Xu-MSFT ,

It looks like the command should be run on an Exchange server as on a domain controller cmdlet is not recognized.

In my case Exchange server was decommissioned 2-3 years ago (it was disjoined from the domain and the VM was removed from Hyper-V).

Answer 5

Hi @ITGeek_82 ,

Is it normal to use OWA? Can you try using O365 normally?