Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP1

Topic Last Modified: 2011-08-02

Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

Outlook Anywhere enables users in remote office or mobile users to connect their Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or later clients to your Exchange organization without requiring them to connect to a virtual private network (VPN).

Learn more at: Understanding Outlook Anywhere

Important:
In addition to your hybrid server, your other on-premises Exchange servers must also be configured for Outlook Anywhere (formerly known as RPC over HTTP) if you want remote users to be able to connect remotely to those servers without using a VPN.

Learn more at: Configure Outlook Anywhere in an Environment with Earlier Versions of Exchange
Caution:
This topic is meant to be read as part of the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Office 365 Hybrid Deployment checklist. Information or procedures in this topic may depend on prerequisites configured in topics earlier in the checklist. To view the checklist, see Checklist - Exchange 2003 and Office 365 Hybrid Deployment.

How do I do this?

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Outlook Anywhere configuration" entry in Client Access Permissions.

You can use the Exchange Management Console on the hybrid server to enable Outlook Anywhere.

  1. In the console tree for the on-premises organization, navigate to Server Configuration > Client Access.

  2. In the action pane, click Enable Outlook Anywhere.

  3. In the Enable Outlook Anywhere wizard, type the external host name or URL for your organization in the box under External host name.

    Note:
    This is the URL that users will use to connect to the Exchange server by using Outlook Anywhere. For example, mail2.contoso.com,
  4. Select an available external authentication method. You can select Basic authentication or NTLM authentication.

  5. If you're using an SSL accelerator and you want to use SSL offloading, select the check box next to Allow secure channel (SSL) offloading.

    Important:
    Don't use this option unless you're sure that you have an SSL accelerator that can handle SSL offloading. If you don't have an SSL accelerator that can handle SSL offloading, and you select this option, Outlook Anywhere won't function correctly.
  6. Click Enable to apply these settings and enable Outlook Anywhere.

  7. Click Finish to close the Enable Outlook Anywhere wizard.

How do I know this worked?

After you enable Outlook Anywhere on your hybrid server and your other on-premises Exchange servers, you can test for end-to-end client Outlook connectivity by doing either of the following:

  • Run the Test-OutlookConnectivity cmdlet. The cmdlet tests for Outlook Anywhere and TCP/IP connections. If the cmdlet test fails, the output notes the step that failed.

  • Run the Outlook Anywhere connectivity test using the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (ExRCA). When you run this test, you get a detailed summary showing where the test failed and what steps you can take to fix issues.

Both tests try to log on through Outlook Anywhere after obtaining server settings from the Autodiscover service. End-to-end verification includes the following:

  • Testing for Autodiscover connectivity.

  • Validating DNS.

  • Validating certificates (whether the certificate name matches the Web site, whether the certificate has expired, and whether it's trusted).

  • Checking that the firewall is set up correctly (ExRCA checks overall firewall setup. The cmdlet tests for Windows firewall configuration.).

  • Confirming client connectivity by logging on to the user's mailbox.

Learn more at: Test Outlook Anywhere Connectivity

Having problems? Ask for help in the Office 365 forums. To access the forums, you'll need to sign in using an account that's granted administrator access to your cloud-based service. Visit the forums at: Office 365 Forums