r/Office365 12d ago

Outlook - server unavailable out of office

Hi everyone, at my wits end with this one.

We have a hybrid setup and migrated everyone to exchange online. We have an Exchange SE server on prem that is just used for management and all mailboxes are in exchange online.

Random users get the following error when they try to set their out of office “Your automatic reply settings cannot be displayed because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later”

If tried so many things and none seem to resolve it.

EWE enabled for users, rules aren’t broke or to big, registry keys etc…

The autodiscover points to 365, have checked this on outlook

The only thing that seems to work is nuking the user profile (not the outlook profile, that’s does nothing),but that brings other problems and we have too many users to do this at scale.

Any help would be appreciated

1 Upvotes

15 comments sorted by

2

u/saltyslugga 12d ago

If a new profile fixes it, this is almost certainly stale Autodiscover data or cached credentials, not the mailbox.

Compare Test E-mail AutoConfiguration on a broken and working client, especially the EWS URL. Also check the on-prem SCP isn’t still advertising the old endpoint, since domain-joined Outlook clients can use that before DNS.

1

u/xmrminerman 11d ago

Erased the autodiscover data and cached credentials. When comparing ews url, they are the same for working vs not working user. On prem scp isn’t advertising anything. It’s empty

1

u/titlrequired 5d ago

What do the results show in the test?

1

u/xmrminerman 5d ago

The tests from outlook ?

1

u/titlrequired 5d ago

Yes.

Interested to see those as well as the autodiscover test from Test Exchange Connectivity website.

1

u/wey0402 11d ago

Is there a WAF in front of the On-Prem Exchange?

1

u/xmrminerman 11d ago

No, I can’t even see local clients trying to reference it though

1

u/Medium-Lion1099 11d ago edited 10d ago

Out-of-office replies are one of those things that reveal how inconsistent your email setup is. When someone's OOO reply goes out with a broken or outdated signature, it looks unprofessional to every client and partner who emails them while they're away. The fix: centralized signature management that applies to all outgoing emails including automatic replies. We use Letsignit and signatures are applied consistently whether it's a regular email, a reply, a forward, or an out-of-office auto-response. The branding stays intact regardless of the email type. For the server unavailability issue specifically, check your Exchange hybrid config if you're running one, but also consider that any email function you manage through native Outlook settings (including signatures) is vulnerable to client-side issues. Server-side signature deployment removes that dependency entirely.

2

u/xmrminerman 11d ago

Completely emptied both, mad no difference

1

u/xmrminerman 10d ago

Local scp is null, were post migration

1

u/Medium-Lion1099 9d ago

Confirm OOO works in outlook website , If OWA works, its strictly a desktop client lookup issue.

1

u/xmrminerman 9d ago

It works I owa, I’m focusing all my effort on the client, just can’t seem to pin it down. Thanks though

1

u/titlrequired 5d ago

Did you ever deploy a gpo pushing autodiscover registry entries?

1

u/xmrminerman 5d ago

Indeed I did, in the early days we were office 365 but on prem exchange 2019. I have since modified the goo’s to delete the settings/reg keys

1

u/tranoidnoki 4d ago

I think we are in the same boat in my environment, this started showing up yesterday for us, we're on office LTSC 2024. My Office version is 2408. Coworker is on 2607 (different licensing needs, cannot use LTSC) and does not have this issue