"Delivery has failed" error When Scheduling a Resource

There are plenty of answers to the error message:

"Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:
 
Jane Doe
Your message wasn't delivered because of security policies..."

In our case, Jane Doe was no longer an employee and her account was disabled. The sender of the message was requesting a meeting with someone who had Jane as his admin, so he had her as a Delegate for his Calendar. Once we removed her from his Outlook's Delegate list, there were no more errors.

Pretty simple, but they've moved Delegate Access in Outlook 2010, now you go to File > Account Settings > Delegate Access

For Outlook 2007 and earlier, go to Tools > Options > Delegates tab.

Auto-complete Not Working After Outlook 2010 Upgrade

You know you love it, being able to just start typing the first few characters of an address and Outlook "guesses" the rest for you. At least I think you love it, because every time someone's Outlook is upgraded or they are moved to a new system, everyone notices it's missing right off the bat.

Prior to Outlook 2010 all this information was kept in a NK2 file, typically called Outlook.NK2. Previously you could just copy this file to the corresponding folder on a new machine and it worked almost like magic. With the new upgrade, not so much. It's not a hard process to import the auto-complete data, but there are some additional steps.

1. Copy your old *.NK2 file to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook


2. Ensure the name matches your current profile name, default is Outlook. (Look in Control Panel > Mail > Show Profiles... to be sure.)


3. Now from the Run... prompt enter: outlook.exe /importnk2 and click OK.


4. Once imported the NK2 file will have a .old extension, remove that if you wish to run the import again.

All auto-complete data is now kept within an Outlook 2010 mailbox, so no external files will be needed in the future.

(Not so) New Folder Locations

Since the advent of Windows Vista, the usual folder locations don't always apply. Take the Quick Launch or All Users Desktop, where did they go?

Here's a short list of what's been moved around (and yes, I'm writing this as much for me as anyone else)...

All Users:

• All Users Desktop, Favorites, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures & Videos - C:\Users\Public


• All Users Start Menu - C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu


• Documents and Settings (just for completeness sake): C:\Users


• Templates - C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Templates

User Specific:

• Cookies - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies


• Default Outlook OST/PST folder - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook


• Quick Launch - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch


• Send To - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo


• Start Menu - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu


• Temp - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp


• Temporary Internet Files - C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

Search Fails for Some Outlook or OWA Users

Due to a recent power outage at a client site, their Exchange search catalogs became corrupted. The issue at hand was that searches in Outlook or OWA only resulted in showing results prior to the outage.

To confirm that this was the case, I opened the trusty EMS and ran this command on an affected individual.

test-exchangesearch username | fl

This result confirmed the catalog corruption:
ResultFound : False
SearchTime : -1

The fix is rather easy, but depending on your database size, can be rather lengthy. The script below stops the Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer, deletes the Catalog of the database in question and restarts the Indexer which fires off a complete rebuild.

You can find the script here (from where it must be run): <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts

Syntax: ResetSearchIndex.ps1 -force <database>

Example: ResetSearchIndex.ps1 -force "Mailbox One"

The rebuilding of our catalogs took almost an hour for a 80GB database. And that was on a fairly powerful system with 32GB of RAM.

Recurring meeting has been declined!

A recent Outlook user, trying to book a non-recurring meeting, received this error: "Giant Conference Room has declined your meeting because it is recurring. You must book each meeting separately with this resource." But, it was non-recurring!!!

This error comes about when multiple users have the same resource open, in this case a conference room, and make edits causing the Free/Busy information to become corrupt.

In order to fix the issue, just change one of the scheduling settings within Outlook > Options > Calendar > Resource Scheduling..., such as "Automatically decline recurring meeting requests," click OK, then change it back. It'll cause the Free/Busy data to rebuild and scheduling may once again take place.

MAPI32.DLL wrong version or corrupt

One of my clients recieved the error message "MAPI32.DLL wrong version or corrupt" a few months ago, after trying Outlook 2007 and reverting back to Outlook 2003. The fix was simpler than expected...

With Outlook closed, browse on over to C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033 and rename the MSMAPI32.DLL file. Open Outlook again and the MSMAPI32.DLL file will be replaced with the proper version (Office or Outlook install media may be required).

Outlook Links Don't Work

One of my customers recently had an issue with broken links in all his Outlook e-mail. Any link that was present in the body or subject would not work, only giving the cryptic message: "This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer."

Turned out to be an issue with an faulty uninstall of Chrome, which left some bits behind in the registry. Bad, bad uninstaller! Go stand in the corner!

Anyway, after numerous searches and a number of unsuccessful fix attempts, Slipstick had the answer. Windows was trying to use the browser that was no longer installed, but was still referenced in the registry.

1. Start, click Run..., type Regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.


2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.html


3. Right-click the value for the .html key and select Modify...


4. Change the value from "ChromeHTML" to "htmlfile" (or from FireFoxHTML to htmlfile)


5. Repeat these steps for .htm and .shtml keys if they exist. You may also want to check the .xhtml and .xhtm keys.

Note: As always, the Registry can be a dangerous place, so do a backup/export before making changes.

This didn't even require a reboot and yet another happy customer was made. Judging by the amount of possible issues causing this message, this is only one needle in a field of haystacks.

Recovering Deleted Mail in Outlook

Disclaimer: This is only for those using Exchange (and always backup your registry before editing).

So you've hit Shift-Delete on a mail item or perhaps even setup a POP account on a system that totally drains all of your messages from your Inbox. Don't fret, highlight the folder in question, go to Tools > Recover Deleted Items... and bring your messages back from the brink of death.

What's that you say? You don't have Outlook 2007 with item recovery enabled on every folder. Well here's the fix for those with older versions of Outlook:

1. Fire up Regedit (Start > Run... Regedit, OK)
2. Locate and then click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
3. On the Edit menu, click New > DWORD Value, and then add the following registry value:
         Value name: DumpsterAlwaysOn
         Value: 1
4. Close Regedit

You're done. Now you can retrieve items at will.

Lockdown in Sector 4

One of my customers yesterday contacted me because they were getting an error when connecting to GMail using Outlook. It was the dreaded 'Lockdown in Sector 4" notice, which apparently happens when the Google bots come to the conclusion that there is some kind of unusual account activity.

Mail account access through IMAP or POP is locked for a period of up to 24 hours and then you're free to use it until the bots decide you're abusing it. Actually, it's something that more e-mail providers should be doing to reduce spam and account security.