Exchange Offline Address Book Error - OAB Repair
| 22 March 2010
As an Exchange Admin you have probably come accross the newer versions of Outlook that have the 'cached mode' feature. This is a relatively new feature that shipped with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. Becasue of this new feature the Exchange Offline Address book OAB has become more critical than ever. OAB updates are pushed down to running clients every 24 hours - so it's not that quick.
The 2 most common issues with OAB are:
- Changes that are made in Active Directory to accounts, groups and lists are not seen in the Global Address Book on Outlook 2003 clients.
- Error messages being logged regularly in Exchange or Outlook (in the 'Sync Isssues' folder).
Stage 1 in repairing this issue:
Verify that the GAL (Global Address Book) is infact up to date on the Server. In Exchange System Manager go to the 'Recipients' folder and select 'All Global Address Lists' - Then right click on 'Default Global Address List' and choose 'Properties' - On this page there is a button called 'Preview' - Select this and a complete GAL will be shown (hopefully with your updates showing!). See below:
In Exchange 2007 you will have to perform this check by using OWA and to see if you can see recent changes in the address book.
Stage 2 in reparing this issue:
Outlook 2003, 2007 and now 2010 in cached mode or with Offline folders (older versions) all use the OAb (Offline Address Book) that is downloaded from the Exchange Server - If Outlook is running all the time this download occurs every 24 hours or when Outlook is first started. If you need to see changes immediately then there are a couple of things you need to do:
1. Rebuild the Address Book. This usually fixes a number of minor issues.
In Exchange 2003 you need to open the 'Exchange System Manager' and open the 'Recipients' folder, then 'Offline Address Book'. right click on the default and select 'rebuild' See below.. this might takle a moment or two depending how large your address book is.
In Exchange 2007 its a little different - Finally! - For this version of Exchange you need to open the 'Exchange Management Shell' and then type the following: get-offlineaddressbook | update-offlineaddressbook and then press enter. Again, depending how large your address book is determines how this will take - should only be a few seconds though. See below:
2. Get your clients to rebuild / download their own address book again from Outlook.
In order to manually download the address book from an Outlook client they need to select 'Tools' - 'Send Recieve' and choose 'Download Address Book' and then select Ok.
Stage 3 - For the Power Admin!
If changes are made to your AD or groups and lists with any real frequency that must be included in the GAL quicker than usual you can of course edit the scheduled update times of the Offline Address List updates. I should point out though that this IS NOT RECOMMENDED by Microsoft or MMMUG so your on your own if it goes south!
In Exchange 2000 & 2003 open the 'Exchange System Manager' and selct 'Recipients' and then 'Offline Address Lists' - right Click on 'Default Offline Address List' and select 'Properties' - You can then choose to 'Update Interval' and slect your own schedule for updates. if you are going to do this try and ensure your not doing it too much - perhaps 3 or 4 times a day at most should be all thats required. See below:
