Thursday, November 1, 2007

Out of Office Assistant not Working

The OOF message is a hidden entry in a user’s mailbox. The Out of Office Assistant creates a set of two rules in the Inbox subtree. The first contains a Message Class of IPM.Note.Rules.Oof.Template.MicrosoftMessage, whilst the other rule contains a Message Class of IPM.Note.Rules.OoFTemplate.Microsoft. If one or both of these rules are corrupted or unsynchronized with the OOF-enabled indicator, then it’s possible that the Out Of Office notification may no longer work.

To resolve this, use the Mdbvue32 (Microsoft Exchange Server Information Store Viewer) utility which can downloaded from here to delete the two entries for Out of Office.

Here are the instructions:

1. Run mdbvu32.exe.
2. Click OK to clear the first window that pops up.
3. Make sure that your profile is selected in the Choose Profile window and click OK.
4. Click on the MDB menu option.
5. Click on the OpenMessageStore option.
6. Make sure that "Mailbox- [user's full name]" is selected and click on Open.
7. Click on the MDB menu option again.
8. Click Open Root Folder.
9. In the Child Folders box - double click on "Top of Information Store".
10. In the next Child Folders box - double click on "Inbox".
11. Look in the Associated Messages in Fld box. All of your rules are in this box.
12. Examine each row of entries that appear under Associated Messages in Fld by double-clicking the CB items one at a time.

You are looking for two items that have the following message properties:
  • The item that contains a message property Ox65EB that displays either OOF Rules or MSFT:TDX OOF Rules.
  • The items that contain a message property PR_MESSAGE_CLASS that displays IPM.Note.Rules.OofTemplate.Microsoft.

13. Select both CB: values. To do so, press and hold down CTRL while you click both CB values under Associated Messages in Fld.
14. In the "Operations available (select operation, then push Call Function button)" text box, push the drop down button to reveal the list of functions.
15. Scroll down the list of functions until you see "lpFld -> deleteMessages() (ON SELECTED MSGS)" and then click on it to select it.
16. Next press the Call Function button. This will delete the rule that you selected.
17. Press the Close button to exit the MAPI_FOLDER window.
18. Press Close again to exit all the windows.

Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/248709