We have a hybrid environment where all user mailboxes have been migrated to Exchange Online. An Exchange Server Subscription Edition server remains on-premises only for management.
Some users randomly receive this message in classic Outlook when trying to configure automatic replies: "Your automatic reply settings cannot be displayed because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later."
Automatic replies work normally in Outlook on the web. EWS is enabled, mailbox rules are not oversized or corrupted, and autodiscover and the EWS URL both resolve to Exchange Online. The affected and unaffected users also show the same results in Outlook's Test E-mail AutoConfiguration.
Clearing credentials, checking registry settings, deleting cached autodiscover files, and applying the policy to disable cached lookups have not helped. Rebuilding the Windows user profile fixes the problem, but recreating only the Outlook profile does not, and rebuilding profiles for many users is not practical. Is there another client-side cache or identity component that could be causing this?
3 Answers
The fact that a few users also cannot sign in or send mail suggests this may be part of a broader Office authentication or Windows profile problem rather than an isolated automatic-reply setting. I would compare the affected users’ Office activation and work-account state with a working user, then test whether removing and re-adding the work or school account clears the cached identity without rebuilding the whole profile.
Rather than deleting the whole Windows profile, try removing Outlook’s cached autodiscover data. Check the hidden XML files under %localappdata%MicrosoftOutlook and %localappdata%MicrosoftOutlook16. There is also a policy setting that disables cached autodiscover lookups, which can help determine whether stale local data is involved.
Since automatic replies work in Outlook on the web and rebuilding the entire Windows profile fixes the issue, this looks more like a client-side Office identity or WAM cache problem than an Exchange, EWS, or mailbox-rule issue. Signing out of Office, removing stale Office credentials from Credential Manager, and signing back in may help. It is also worth comparing Outlook’s autodiscover results with a working user to confirm that the EWS endpoint resolves to Exchange Online.
That was my suspicion too, but OWA works, all credentials have already been cleared, and the autodiscover results and EWS URLs match the working users. The problem still remains on the affected machines.
I deleted the entire Outlook local-data folder and applied the policy, but the affected users still get the same error.