The last post in my series of Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007 posts. When using Outlook in an office environment you normally run it in cached exchange mode, put simply, this means that it stores a local copy of your mailbox, and associated items so that you can still work and prepare emails, appointments and notes whilst you exchange server may be offine.

With an offline address book, the name is a little misleading, it allows you to send emails to people within your organisation when you are offline, but it is also used when you are online. The primary use for OAB is so that when you are sending email, Outlook does not have to query your exchange server every time. As you can imagine, if exchange had to deal with a new address book query every time someone wanted to write an email, it would quickly drain the server resources.

In one of my last positions, there was always an error message in Outlook that our network admin always said “Yea, thats fine, it always does that” which, to me, was not an acceptable answer. This message had now started to appear on our internal systems and I knew which way I had to go to get the situation resolved, google it. In some of hte first pages I went through I found the resolution:

Using the Exchange Management Consolse (SP1 mind, since they have improved it’s support and features). RESOLUTION: Bonded offline address list to primary storgage group

Exchange Management Console=>Server Configuration=>Mailbox=>Database Management tab=>
First Storage Group Properties (right click and select properties)=>Client Settings tab=>Offline Address Book field=>click browse button and select the respective OAB defined on the system.

So in conclusion, we have learned a little of what an OAB is and why it is used, but also if you need the answer to something, just google it.

Steve