One of the common errors that an Outlook user may face is when Outlook crashes when connecting to Exchange Server. Let us suppose that user wants to connect Outlook to an Exchange Online Mailbox migrated from on-premises Exchange Server. However, MS Outlook displays an error, restricting user to perform any action. In the blog, we will be discussing the solution to resolve the situation stated above.
Problem
The issue is mainly encountered when user tries to migrate mailboxes from the on-premises Exchange Server Environment to Exchange Online. When user launches the MS Outlook in such situation, a screen will appear with the status of ‘Not Responding’ and it will not allow user to perform any actions in their Outlook account.
The possible reason for the occurrence of the problem is when Outlook is trying to use on-premises Client access Servers that are referenced in the client registry or in service connection point (SCP) objects found in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).
Most of the issues are associated with registry entries that have been inserted incorrectly. Before making any changes in the registry, backup the registry for restoration.
In order to resolve the issue, we will set the value of the ExcludeSCPLookup DWORD value in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\\Outlook\Autodiscover registry key to 1. The steps that need to be followed are:
- Stop MS Outlook
- Go to Start, type regedit in the search space & press Enter to open Registry Editor
- Look for the following registry key in the Registry Editor:
“HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\\Outlook\AutoDiscover”
The value will vary with different versions of Outlook that user has installed:
- x is 15.0 in case of Outlook 2013
- x is 14.0 in case of Outlook 2010
- x is 12.0 for Outlook 2007
1. Perform any of these functions:
- Search if the ExcludeSCPLookup DWORD value exists or not, if it exists go to step 5
- If it does not exist, we need to create it. For this do the following steps:
- Go to Edit menu, click on New and select DWORD value
- Type ExcludeSCPLookup & press Enter
- Select ExcludeSCPLookup and right-click on it, go to Modify option and type 1 in the value data box
- Click OK and Exit the Registry editor
- Exit the Outlook and Re-start it
Note: While users are migrating from Outlook Offline file to Exchange Online. There are chances that the Outlook Offline file gets corrupted. In such situation user can access offline Outlook data file using third party tool “SysTools Outlook OST viewer freeware” to Open and view their corrupted OST file in healthy format. .
Conclusion
The content has been aimed to focus on one of the errors that Outlook user faces while connecting to Exchange Server. It usually occurs when the user tries to migrate mailboxes from on-premise Exchange Server environment to Exchange Online. The possible reason for the occurrence of error has been described along with resolution approach to guide users in overcoming the issue effectively.