User Address Book does not load

Question

I have a user who just recently started having issues with their account. They can sign in without any issues, their email is coming in and out normally, everything works fine with one exception. When they start a new email and the click the to button, they get an alert that says "Microsoft Outlook The Connection to Microsoft Exchange is Unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action." Outlook is connected though as emails are coming and they can send emails out, it's just the address book for some reason that brings up that error. It works just fine when they log into the Outlook Web, but the Outlook application on any PC has the same issue.

It seems to be something isolated to this user though as it follows them to other PCs on the network. Other users and myself can log into the same PCs that they log into and not have any errors.

To cover the bases here is what I have tried so far that had no effect:

Reinstall Office

DNS cache Flush

Delete the Outlook Profile and create a new one

Completely delete their profile from the PC and establish a new one

Changed their password on 365 at the admin level

Tried to manually address book to her account

Did not try to repair office as I already reinstalled it and the issue follows them to any PC. I did not try to import the user shell folder as I've seen listed on other forums as I do not have another PC that she was on that it previously worked on. I have not removed their license to sync up to Microsoft without it and then put it back and sync up afterwards, mostly because the user still needs to keep using their email, but I will try this at some point.

In the windows logs I find a few errors such as login failures that are 5061

Microsoft software key storage provider

UNKNOWN

TB_2_office365.com (also TB_1 & TB_0)

%%2500

%%2480

2148073494

But like I said, none of the other users are having this issue, and it's not isolated to the PC's as it follows her to any other PC they log into. I checked on our Azure AD and they are not showing any failed sign-ins.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Dear Strider782,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to assist you.

As per the description you have shared, we understand that you have a concern with User Address Book does not load.

We greatly appreciate your time and effort to narrow down the issue and try all possible client-side troubleshooting from your side. Since you have confirmed that the issue persists on different device when adding the affected account, the issue seems account related issue. Therefore, you may try to create alias account for the affected account and make newly created alias account a primary account. Then, add the new primary account in new Outlook profile on user's PC and check if there is any difference.

To create Alias for the affected account, Go to Microsoft Admin center --> Users -->Active users --> Select the affected account from the users list -->under Account section, click Manage username and emails -->Under Aliases, Give username --> Add --> click Three dots beside the alias account --> select Change to primary -->Save change. Then Go to user's PC and set new Outlook profile and add account with the new username account and existing password. Then check if the issue still persists.

Note: a user can keep using the affected account to send and receive emails, the only change will for sign in.

If the issue still persists or if you need to resolve for the existing account, we do understand your query here but, as your query is account related, it needs to be checked from backend side, and since we are belong to Microsoft Community site, we have limited resource and privilege to examine backend side related scenarios. Therefore, we sincerely recommend you contact our dedicated Technical support team via Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn. They have more privilege and resource than us, hopefully they will give you accurate and efficient solution for your concerns.

Thank you for your time and understanding. For other questions, feel free to add your post in the Microsoft Community team.

Stay safe and healthy. Have a good day!

Sincerely,

Libeamlak | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Hi,

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

We are looking into your situation, we will update the thread shortly.

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

Sincerely,

Katherine | Microsoft Community Moderator