[ms office - 2016] Issues with Outlook 2016 - Office365

[Davida1992]

We are having ongoing issues with Outlook in our environment and it is becoming a big problem. I have been discussing this with Microsoft for the past month but it is intermittent which makes it very difficult to replicate when Microsoft require so I am hoping to explain our symptoms to see if anyone has experienced any similar issues.

 

Our environment is currently Windows 7 Enterprise and we use Sophos Antivirus.

 

Staff primarily use the desktop version of 2016 in online mode but there are intermittent issues with the following:

 

- Staff experience slow launching of Outlook it can be stuck at the processing stage for some time.

- Some staff receive errors on launch telling them that a connection cannot be made to exchange and to verify internet connectivity etc, this can happen 5 or 6 times in some cases before they can get in.

- Staff receive errors on launch about low system resources and that Outlook cannot be launched. This tends to happen on machines with at least 4GB RAM with no other open apps and at least 2GB free memory. Usually on next launch this goes away.

- Users have massive issues with room and user calendars when adding entries into other calendars. Users receive errors saying they do not have permissions to enter items into the calendars. When this happens I can check on Powershell and they are set as an editor on the particular calendar. Usually waiting 20 mins or restarting Outlook can resolve the issues. I noticed that if I try this myself, if I add a calendar to Outlook and quickly try to add an entry to the calendar it tells me I do not have permissions, but then I see the calendar flash and I have permission, so it seems to take a few seconds to update, I am thinking this may be normal for Online mode, but for other users I am assuming it is not updating at all for some reason, but this could be something else.

- Outlook crashing and a bubble appearing saying that it is trying to retrieve data from Exchange/Office365, it sometimes crashes or it may return to normal eventually.

 

It is important to note that none of these issues occur when using OWA, just the desktop app. We have tried users on Outlook 2016 and 2013 and similar issues seem to occur.

 

I have tried using the offCAT tool and sent the results to Microsoft and there dont appear to be any errors that appear that could relate to the possible cause for this issue. Is there anyone else that has experienced similar or that can suggest where I can go from here just until I hear back from Microsoft?

 

Naturally users are becoming frustrated with these issues now.

[MatthewL]

Have you got the relevant firewall/proxy rules in place to allow Outlook to work? I know off the top of my head there is a fair few that need putting in place and haven't got the list to hand but it sounds like that could be the issue.

[Cw2k]

We had a load of intermittent connection issues with outlook and office 365

 

Couple of things that helped us

 

In IE, internet options, connections, lan settings we unticked 'automatically detect settings' dealt with the autodiscover issues we had with outlook 2016

 

Made sure http over mapi was enabled, it was preciously disabled in gpo so was causing outlook to use rpc resulting in the connection being slower and having more drop outs.

[Davida1992]

It could potentially be a firewall thing I suppose, although I have tried testing by bypassing the Proxy, obviously those connections are still going through our firewall.

 

Is there a definitive list of rules.IP's that Microsoft suggest/require to be opened anywhere?

 

Also, we have the "auto detect settings" in IE off already in our environment. There is nothing in our registry to prevent MAPI over HTTP, if I go to Outlook connection status the protocol is HTTP and autodiscover for the most part does appear to be OK.

 

Edited December 8, 2016 by Davida1992

[FN-GM]

It could potentially be a firewall thing I suppose, although I have tried testing by bypassing the Proxy, obviously those connections are still going through our firewall.

 

Is there a definitive list of rules.IP's that Microsoft suggest/require to be opened anywhere?

 

Thanks.

 

There is

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Office-365-URLs-and-IP-address-ranges-8548a211-3fe7-47cb-abb1-355ea5aa88a2#bkmk_exo

[Cazale]

Are you redirecting App Data?

[Davida1992]

Hi, no we do not redirect AppData.