Exchange 2013 - Offline Address Book cannot be downloaded to Outlook

Question

Exchange 2013 - Offline Address Book cannot be downloaded to Outlook

36584367 201

Hi,

We have Exchange 2013 on-prem and we just noticed that we cannot download the offline address book on our Outlook client. Whenever we try to do so, we are getting this error - "0x8004010F - the operation failed. An object cannot be found".

I searched on the Internet and tried the below suggestions but still problem persists:

Create a new offline address book
Check that authenticated users have read permissions
Removed OAB folder from client side and tried downloading it again - when I tried doing this, I am getting an error "the connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action"

Is there anything else I can try please? Thanks

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Answer 1

Hi,

Thanks for your detailed explanation.

Does the issue occur on all internal and external Outlook clients? - this is happening when Outlook is set with cached mode. The address book is visible if Outlook is set to "live" mode. The address book is also visible if we login via OWA.
Did you perform some changes on the Exchange server before the issue occurs? For example, installed CU or SU update.
And what is Exchange server's current CU version? - we have Exchange 2013 version 15.00.1263.005. I don't remember when this started exactly since we did not notice it straight away
Do you currently have other Outlook connection issues besides downloading Offline Address Book? - no other issues till now

When I did the Test E-mail configuration thing, the OAB URL did not show. How can I see the OAB from EAC as per your screenshot?

When I ran the command get-offlineaddressbook | fl Name,guid , the guid of my address book came up with no issues. I can also see the address book listed under the C:\ directory

I am attaching screenshots of command Get-OfflineAddressBook | fl

Thanks a lot!

Kael Yao 37,746 Reputation points Moderator

2021-08-23T08:47:22.577+00:00

Hi,
Thanks for the information.

When I did the Test E-mail configuration thing, the OAB URL did not show. How can I see the OAB from EAC as per your screenshot?

I suppose this may be the cause of the issue.
Please access Exchange Admin Center and locate Servers>virtual directories.
Double click on the OAB(Default Web Site) and make sure the Internal URL and the External URL are correctly configured,which should be resolvable in DNS and accessible by the clients:

You may also need to restart IIS and recycle the Autodiscover application pool in IIS after you modify the URLs.

If the OAB url is returned in Test E-mail Autoconfiguration, please retry the OAB download in Outlook.

Answer 2

Hi @36584367

Sorry I may need to first ask a few questions about this issue:

Does the issue occur on all internal and external Outlook clients?
Did you perform some changes on the Exchange server before the issue occurs? For example, installed CU or SU update.
And what is Exchange server's current CU version?
Do you currently have other Outlook connection issues besides downloading Offline Address Book?

Here are several suggestions for further troubleshooting:

Please run Test E-mail Autoconfiguration via affected Outlook clients and check if the OAB url is returned under the "Results" tag:

By default it would be the internal or external url of the OAB virual directory, plus the OAB guid.
OAB virtual directory in EAC:

OAB guid in EMS:

2.If the OAB url is returned correctly and the url settings are correct on your Exchange server, please check the following path on your server and see if the OAB folder exists.
Path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\ClientAccess\OAB\<guid>

If the folder doesn't exist, please run the following command to force OAB generation:

Get-OfflineAddressBook | Update-OfflineAddressBook

After the folder is generated, please retry downloading OAB in Outlook.

3.If the issue persists, please run the following command and post a screenshot or post in text of the results.
(Don't forget to hide your personal information for security)

Get-OfflineAddressBook | fl

If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
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Answer 3

36584367 201

Hi,

I checked EAC and found out that the OAB URL's had lots of garbage written! I fixed both the external and internal URL's, gave Exchange a restart + did Recycle but problem still persists. Any idea what I can try next please? Thanks

Kael Yao 37,746 Reputation points Moderator

2021-08-24T08:00:05.573+00:00
Hi,

Is the OAB url still missing in Test E-mail Autoconfiguration?

From your screenshot, it seems you have two OABs, the default one (Default Offline Address Book) and another custom one.
And the VirtualDirectories parameter of the default OAB only contains Servername(Exchange Back End), which is supposed to include Servername(Default Web Site) and Servername(Exchange Back End).

Have you assigned the custom OAB to all the databases or mailboxes? Or are they using the default OAB?
If you are using the default OAB, please run the following command via EMS:

Get-OfflineAddressBook | Set-OfflineAddressBook -VirtualDirectories $null -GlobalWebDistributionEnabled $true

And see if it can solve the issue.

Answer 4

36584367 201

Hi,

Before I run the said command I wish to clarify some points that you mentioned.

Yes, the OAB URL is still missing in the Test E-mail Autoconfiguration.

I created a second OAB since the first one (default address book) was giving us the issues that we are speaking off. Obviously the second OAB still gave us the same issues that we are talking about and now we have two identical address books.

At this stage I assigned the custom address book as the "default" one I THINK! If I run the above command, does this apply to the custom address book too? Thanks

Kael Yao 37,746 Reputation points Moderator

2021-08-25T09:35:10.18+00:00

Hi,

At this stage I assigned the custom address book as the "default" one I THINK!

However, from the screenshot above, it seems the Default Offline Address Book is still the default OAB. (As the value IsDefault is true)

Have you assigned the custom address book to specific databases?
How to assign OAB to databases: Assign offline address books to mailbox databases

If a database doesn't have a specific OAB, it would use the default one(Default Offline Address Book).

If I run the above command, does this apply to the custom address book too?

It would apply to both OABs, the default one and the custom one.
36584367 201 Reputation points

2021-08-25T09:46:53.76+00:00

Hi,

I ran the above command but still the same.

The thing is that when I checked which OAB is assigned, actually its my custom one called OAB_. I also checked from EAC and I can see there are two OAB's - one called Default Address Book and the other OAB_. Its quite clear that the latter one is chosen as the "default" one.
36584367 201 Reputation points

2021-08-25T10:08:00.58+00:00

Hi,

I noticed that the OAB was not assigned to mailboxes but only to the database! I assigned the OAB to my email address and can see the OAB URL in the test autoconfiguration but still cannot download in Outlook
Kael Yao 37,746 Reputation points Moderator

2021-08-26T07:09:27.65+00:00

Hi,

Assigning OAB to databases would have the mailboxes hosted by the database to use this OAB.
Or you may also assign OAB to single mailboxes, it works the same.

I assigned the OAB to my email address and can see the OAB URL in the test autoconfiguration but still cannot download in Outlook
Was the error message same as "0x8004010F - the operation failed. An object cannot be found"?

Please also recreate an Outlook profile and see if it can get rid of the issue.
36584367 201 Reputation points

2021-08-27T06:11:18.55+00:00

Hi,

It seems problem got solved on its own :-/. It could be that the last command that you gave me to run solved the issue and needed time to replicate? I am talking about this - Get-OfflineAddressBook | Set-OfflineAddressBook -VirtualDirectories $null -GlobalWebDistributionEnabled $true
Kael Yao 37,746 Reputation points Moderator

2021-08-27T06:55:38.56+00:00

Hi,

Running this command would set the all OAB virtual directories to accept OAB requests. It is the recommended setting by Microsoft.

Besides this command, I think configuring correct OAB urls in EAC was also the key to resolve the issue.

Anyway, glad to hear the issue was resolved :)
If you don't mind, please mark the replies which were helpful as the answer to the question.
This will make answer searching in the forum easier and be beneficial to other community members as well.
Kael Yao 37,746 Reputation points Moderator

2021-08-31T08:09:33.767+00:00

Hi @36584367

I'm here to confirm with you if your issue has been resolved.
If you have any questions or needed further help on this issue, please feel free to post back.

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Exchange 2013 - Offline Address Book cannot be downloaded to Outlook

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