"Object reference not set to an instance of an object." while configuring Out-of-Office message on behalf of another user as the admin through direct link.

Question

"Object reference not set to an instance of an object." while configuring Out-of-Office message on behalf of another user as the admin through direct link.

Answer 1

Hello Nandhini Ravichandran1,

Good day!

Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are glad to assist.

We are looking into your situation and we need sometime to do further research on this. Will update the thread shortly.

Appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Microsoft Community

Answer 2

Dear Nandhini Ravichandran1,

Hope this finds you well.

I understand that you have an issue setting up an OOF message for a user mailbox.

I did some tests on my end as well and looks like I' getting the same behavior. As a global/Exchange admin, you can try to set this through Exchange online PowerShell. Please see steps below.

Ignore steps 1-3 if you already installed the Exchange Online PowerShell module and just connect (step 4). Run Windows PowerShell as an administrator and input the following. Ref: Connect-ExchangeOnline (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn

1. Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
2. Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement
3. Import-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
4. Connect-ExchangeOnline #sign in with your admin account credentials.
5. Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration -Identity ******@contoso.com -AutoReplyState Enabled -StartTime "1/15/2024 09:00:00" -EndTime "3/3/2024 18:00:00" -InternalMessage "Internal auto-reply message." -ExternalMessage "External auto-reply message." -ExternalAudience All

Ref: Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn

Looking forward to your response.

Best Regards,

Ashraf.

Answer 3

This is happening in our organization as well. We set this for term employees and need this fixed as soon as possible.

Answer 4

I have a support ticket as well for this issue. We are experiencing it as well in our Exchange Online tenant. The work around is to set the Auto-reply in the main https://admin.microsoft.com/ portal. This is less than ideal since you can set a start or end date in that interface. Also trying to set the start and end date via powershell doesn't work either.

Answer 5

just tried this as well and got the same answer. Is there any update on this?

Thanks.