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Install an Office Online Server

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Estimated time to complete: 20 minutes

To enable users to view supported file attachments within Outlook on the web (Outlook) without downloading them first and without having a local installation of the program, you need to install Office Online Server on at least one computer in your organization. Without Office Online Server installed, Outlook users need to download attachments to their local computer, and then open them in a local application.

Note

Office Online Server is available for download as part of a volume licensing agreement. If you don't have a volume license agreement, you can skip the instructions in this step. However, without Office Online Server installed, Outlook users will need to download attachments to their local computer to view them; they won't be able to view them in Outlook.

Office Online Server

To install Office Online Server on your computer, do the following:

  1. Download Office Online Server from the Volume License Service Center.

  2. Go to the location where you downloaded Office Online Server and run setup.exe.

  3. Follow the Office Online Server setup wizard, select an installation location, and then click Install Now.

  4. If you want to install Office Online Server server language packs, see Language Packs for Office Web Apps Server.

  5. Obtain and import an SSL certificate with the fully qualified domain name(s) (FQDN) of the Office Online Server server. If your organization is configured for split DNS), you only need to configure one FQDN on the certificate. For example, oos.contoso.com. If you have different internal and external FQDNs, you'll need to configure both FQDNs on the certificate. For example, oos.internal.contoso.com and oos.contoso.com.

  6. Configure DNS records to point the FQDN(s) on the certificate to your Office Online Server server. If you have different DNS servers for internal and external users, you'll need to configure the appropriate FQDN on each server.

  7. Open Windows PowerShell and run the following commands. When you run the commands, replace the example FQDNs and certificate friendly name with your own.

    • Same internal and external FQDN New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL "https://oos.contoso.com" -ExternalURL "https://oos.contoso.com" -CertificateName "Office Online Server Preview Certificate"

    • Different internal and external FQDNs New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL "https://oos.internal.contoso.com" -ExternalURL "https://oos.contoso.com" -CertificateName "Office Online Server Preview Certificate"

Configure the Office Online Server endpoint at the Mailbox server level

After you've configured the Office Online Server server, do the following on your Exchange 2016 server. This will allow Outlook to send requests to the Office Online Server server.

  • Open the Exchange Management Shell and run the following command. Replace the example server name and URL with your own.

    Set-MailboxServer MBX -WacDiscoveryEndpoint "https://oos.internal.contoso.com/hosting/discovery"

  • Restart the MsExchangeOwaAppPool by running the following command.

    Restart-WebAppPool MsExchangeOwaAppPool

Configure the Office Online Server endpoint at the organization level

After you've configured the Office Online Server server, do the following on your Exchange 2016 server. This will allow Outlook to send requests to the Office Online Server server.

  • Open the Exchange Management Shell and run the following command. Replace the example URL with your own.

    Set-OrganizationConfig -WacDiscoveryEndpoint "https://oos.internal.contoso.com/hosting/discovery"

    Important

    If you have Exchange 2013 servers in your organization, don't configure an endpoint at the organization level. Doing so will direct Exchange 2013 servers to use the Office Online Server server. This isn't supported.

  • Restart the MsExchangeOwaAppPool by running the following command.

    Restart-WebAppPool MsExchangeOwaAppPool

How do I know this worked?

To verify that Office Online Server is correctly configured, do the following on your Exchange 2016 Mailbox server:

  1. Open Control Panel, then Administrative Tools, and then Event Viewer.

  2. In Event Viewer, expand Windows Logs, and then select the Application log.

  3. In the event list, look for events with the following:

    • Source: MSExchange OWA

    • Event ID: 142

    • Task Category: Wac

    • Level: Information

    • Description: We have successfully retrieved data from the Wac Discovery Service. Wac should be enabled. Successfully retrieved configuration data from <Office Online Server URL>. Supported File types: .ods-> <list of supported file types>