Send/Receive error in Outlook 2003 after moving to Exchange 2007

Good day readers,

 Today I'm gonna write again about some stupid issue a encountered at a customer's site today when migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.

After I moved all mailboxes from E2K3 to E2K7, and decommissioned the E2K3 box from my network using the official ways (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822931 could be used as a reference for input on how to do is), the Outlook 2003 clients started getting a Send/Receive error; everything was working fine however, mail comes in and goes out without issues...

After some investigation in the Event Log, I found out it was related to a missing OAB - Offline Address Book reference.

As the change you walk into this issue also is to be rated at about 100%, I thought on writing a new post on this matter, which gives the solution to the issue:

• From the Exchange Management Console, go to Organization Configuration / Mailbox / Tab “Offline Address Book”
• Normally, an entry “default offline addressbook” should already exist. If not, create one using the button on the right
• Properties van het default offline addressbook should be set as follows:
  • General = default offline address book; run daily at 05.00
  • Address List = select “Include Global Address list”
  • Distribution = select all options, except the first one (Outlook 98 SP1 or Earlier)
    + enable web based distribution (the field mentions OAB Website; if not, add it here)
    + enable Public Folder distribution
• From the Exchange Management Console / Server Configuration / Mailbox / select “Mailbox Database” in the middle window
  • Properties / Client Settings / Offline Address Book – browse, and select “Default Offline AddressBook”
• From the Exchange Management Console / Organization Configuration / Mailbox / Tab “Offline Address Book”
• Select Default Offline Address Book / Rightclick/ Update
  
  
• Restart the Outlook 2003 Application, send a new mail to your own mailbox. After forcing to send with "Send/Receive" button, the error should have gone away. If not, wait for replication to occur or restart your Outlook again. Even a PC reboot was required on some machines.

 Thanks for visiting, and I hope again this post was helpfull.

Kind regards,

PDT IT