Out of Office does not work...

Question

Having: Exchange 2016, Citrix users with Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2016.
Some users open Outlook and go to file/automatic replies and get an error that the server is not available although others on the same citrix server can open it immediately.

We looked already if autodiscover is all right. We looked if we can connect to the exchange server (ping, create new mailbox in outlook, connection status, test e-mail configuration (autodiscover), .....). that seems all right for all these items. No failed

When I enter the url https://webmail.mydomain.be/ews/exchange.asmx it gives an answer (so no cannot be found). It gives me the text:

You have created a service.
To test this service, you will need to create a client and use it to call the service. You can do this using the svcutil.exe tool from the command line with the following syntax: and some more text.

That is also correct....

If I logon with userA and I configure his Outlook with the mailbox of userB that has these problems I can open automatic replies without problems. You would think that it is a problem with the user's profile but all users are equal (configuration). And many users have not that issue, others do.
I change the profile path of userA to something else and after loging on I see it is another profile, opening Outlook gives me the wizard and then it opens Outlook. When I go to the autoreplies it gives me the error of not being available.
So I also exclude the Windows profile.

Also, when I make a new Outlook profile in the citrix session of the userB and open Outlook and then "automatic replies" the message of "server is not available...." pops up.

I did also some changes on the exchangeserver and the virtual directories but they didn't help either so I withdraw them.

The list of possibilities is long and almost 5 weeks passed..... no solution yet. Maybe it is a combination of some parameters.
Maybe there is out someone who has search for weeks also but has the solution (hoping)....
Who can give me some tips about this issue.

Thanks for your effort and feedback.
Kind regards
Kurt

Answer 1

Hi @Kurt Stichelmans ,

Considering that you are using a "Mixed" environment and there might be multiple factors which will influence this issue, so I am trying to analyze this issue from the possible factors one by one.

In order to confirm if the issue is related to your Exchange email account itself, it is suggested for you to try the "OOF" feature from the web mail with those problematic email accounts and see if the error could be reproduced. If this issue can be reproduced on the web mail as well, the issue might be related to the email account itself. If everything can work fine on the web mail, I'm afraid that these Exchange account themselves are not the key point of this issue. (Personally I think, User B's email account can work fine in User A's Outlook, User B's email account itself should be fine.)

After excluding the account itself, we could continue to troubleshot this issue from the perspective of Outlook client, Windows or Citrix. Please kindly forgive me about not fully understand your operations mentioned here:

I change the profile path of user A to something else and after logging on I see it is another profile, opening Outlook gives me the wizard and then it opens Outlook. When I go to the autoreplies it gives me the error of not being available.

What exactly does the "profile path" you mentioned here mean? Windows profile or something else?
After your operations mentioned here, did you get this error again when logging in to the User B's mailbox? If so, it is suggested to continue to log into User A's mailbox and see if the issue has any difference.

According to your description, the issue could be reproduced on a working-fine device after your operations, so we might could be able to infer that this issue should be related to this specific operation or the changes that this specific operation leaded to. To conduct further researches on your issue, please try to provide me with more information related to this operation.

If you have any update about this issue, please feel free to post back.

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Answer 2

Hi @Kurt Stichelmans ,

Thanks for your reply.

According to your description, in the new created Windows Profile, the problematic user's email account can be configured successfully, but the autoreply error still exists, right? If so, I'm afraid that I might misunderstood your issue before, please kindly accept my apology.

I do did lots of search and research about your issue in the past few days, but have not found more useful workarounds about it. I noticed that you had tried some troubleshooting methods mentioned in this article: Your automatic reply settings cannot be displayed(Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.). Personally, it is also suggested for you to try the "WinhttpAuth" Registry value mentioned under "Out of Office fails internally with the correct URL" and see if this could help make any difference.

What's more, as I know, there are some registry values and windows settings which will not be influenced by creating new windows profile. To confirm if your issue is related to those, it is suggested to pick one test device to re-install a clean windows and only install Outlook to see if the automatic replies feature could work fine.

By the way, is Citrix also the possible factor? Since I know little about Citrix, if necessary, you could also contact the support of Citrix to see if they could provide some useful information.

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