Multiple users' Global Address List not current.

Question

Hello,

We are running Exchange 2016 (CU16).

Users are reporting that their GAL is not current, and not reflecting additions and removals in Exchange.

I tested with a user by creating a profile with cached mode disabled. This one lists the GAL correctly. I suspect this is not an Outlook client (corrupt OAB), since it appears to be impacting everyone that the customer indicates.

When attempting to Download Address Book, I receive:
"Task 'Email.com" reported error (0x8004010F) : 'The operation failed. An object cannot be found.'

Would it be the right solution to recreate the default OAB? If so, could you please furnish the appropriate steps?

Thanks in advance,
Rudy

Answer 1

Issue was related to Outlook and an odd configuration that the customer had. They have on-prem Exchange, but had also created an Office 365 account. Looks like AutoDiscover was making Outlook "talk" to a cloud account.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover
DWORD (32-bit Value): ExcludeExplicitO365Endpoint
Value: 1

Answer 2

Hi @Rudolf Amarlapudi ,

I won't say that recreating the default OAB will 100% fix this but it still worth a try.
But before that, you could try to set the organization to accept any download request with:

Set-OfflineAddressBook -Identity "Default Offline Address Book" -VirtualDirectories $null -GlobalWebDistributionEnabled $true  

If that fails, then create a new OAB/update it and assign the OAB to the database with the following cmdlets:

New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "OAB" -AddressLists "Default Global Address List" -GlobalWebDistributionEnabled $true  
Get-OfflineAddressBook | Update-OfflineAddressBook  
Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity "MBXDatabase" -OfflineAddressBook "OAB"  

If it still has no luck, use this to test the services:

Test-OutlookWebServices -identity:UserName -MailboxCredential (Get-Credential) | FL  

In addition, someone fixed it by deleting all outlook profiles & data files and all the files in c:\users\usernameAppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook.

Best regards,
Lou

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