Desktop Outlook connecting to Office 365

[nathan]

We have a frustrating issue with Desktop Outlook connecting to Office 365. We have around 6-8 laptops that have suddenly done the following;

 

- Emails get struck in the outbox

- User restarts Outlook but when starting up again it says "Outlook cannot log in, verify you are connected to the network and are using the proper server and mailbox name. The microsoft exchange information service in your profile is missing required information. Modify your profile to ensure that you are using the correct exchange information service". After pressing ok, they get "System resources are critically low. Close some windows". After clicking ok. "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook, cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The information store could not be opened"

 

As i said above, this has happen on a number of standalone laptops (not connected to a domain) and all running Office 2016.

 

I've ran a check DNS in the Office 365 management panel and it reports everything is ok. To me this looks like an autodiscover issue, when trying to re-add an account it keeps asking me for the password again. But the server address is mail.domainname.com which i'm fairly sure it shouldn't be. It should be pointing to office 365's servers, we don't have an DNS records on our hosting for mail.domainname.com

[Steve21]

Have you used the built-in autodiscover test tool thingy? Should show any issues up easily.

 

If you wonder what test, hold control and click the outlook icon in the taskbar (not the program the mini-one) and click test auto configure

 

Steve

[nathan]

Have you used the built-in autodiscover test tool thingy? Should show any issues up easily.

 

If you wonder what test, hold control and click the outlook icon in the taskbar (not the program the mini-one) and click test auto configure

 

Steve

 

I've ran the test on testconnectivity.microsoft.com and it all passes other than when trying to connect to autodiscover with SSL - this fails but the it says the overall test succeeded.

 

I had to create a dummy POP3 account to get into Outlook, but when running the test it continues to try and connect via mail.domainname.com, imap.domainname.com and smtp.domainname.com. We have no DNS records matching them so i'm unsure where they are getting that from.

Edited October 27, 2016 by nathan

[Steve21]

That should be fine then. Two random ones, but are you using McAfee on it? And is it roaming profiles?

 

Steve

[Jobos]

Did you have an in house exchange server before moving to 365?

[nathan]

These are standalone staff laptops, not connected to any domain. We started our of Office 365 and never used an on-premise Exchange and we are not using McAfee Edited October 27, 2016 by nathan

[nathan]

It's really odd, as the autodiscover only picks up IMAP and POP. This is the XML produced by the test within Outlook. Would someone else be able to post one from there working ones?

 

[email protected]

email

settings

IMAP

mail.domainname.com

993

off

off

on

on

[email protected]

SMTP

mail.domainname.com

465

off

off

on

on

[email protected]

[Steve21]

Mine will show a lot different as it's with autodiscover/domain etc.

 

But if you check in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ what's the autodiscover file show in there?

 

Might be a hidden file too depending on setup

 

Steve

[Jobos]

Have you checked the autodiscover record using nslookup?

[nathan]

Have you checked the autodiscover record using nslookup?

 

Non-authoritative answer:

Name: autodiscover-emeawest.outlook.com

Addresses: 132.245.76.232

132.245.195.168

132.245.226.40

132.245.77.24

40.101.40.56

132.245.226.56

132.245.36.104

132.245.176.72

132.245.27.40

Aliases: autodiscover.domainname.com

autodiscover.outlook.com

autodiscover.geo.outlook.com

autodiscover.outlook.com.glbdns2.microsoft.com

 

They look ok to me, in that they are point to MS servers

[Jobos]

Delete the mail profile from the laptop and outlook will download the emails again.

[nathan]

Delete the mail profile from the laptop and outlook will download the emails again.

 

No, they won't reconnect.

 

Just spoke with Microsoft, our hosting provider uses Cpanel that has a autoconfig/autodiscover feature. I'm wondering if this is causing issues - i presume it's turned off but will raise a support ticket with them.

[nathan]

Fixed it!

 

It was an issue with Cpanel email routing, for some reason when it was set to "Automatically Detect" it wouldn't work, i changed this to "Remote Mail Exchanger" and it is now working. This is really strange in that it has always been set to auto. The only reason i can think of is if theres been an update to cpanel that has introduced a bug.

 

[Edu-IT]

Fixed it!

 

It was an issue with Cpanel email routing, for some reason when it was set to "Automatically Detect" it wouldn't work, i changed this to "Remote Mail Exchanger" and it is now working. This is really strange in that it has always been set to auto. The only reason i can think of is if theres been an update to cpanel that has introduced a bug.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39437[/ATTACH]

 

Does cPanel control your MX Records then somehow?

[nathan]

Does cPanel control your MX Records then somehow?

 

When automatically detect is selected on email routing it tries to work out the correct setting based on the MX records used, in our case for some reason it wasn't working it out correctly and would use the local mail exchanger instead of the the remote mail exchanger.

 

This caused the autodiscover to use the cpanel version instead of the office 365 version and gave the incorrect settings to clients