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Exchange 2016 Wrong Offline Address Book Name

This is a known bug in the Exchange 2016 which may cause an oh my god situation.

After installing Exchange 2016 in the environment you will find out the below OAB name when you run the following command

Get-OfflineAddressBook


Now you would wonder why it is showing Exchange 2013 OAB name. Did you mistakenly install Exchange 2013? This is one of the OMG situation because you saw the warning that you can’t install Exchange 2013 any more while updating active directory and Exchange 2013 is there. Something wrong with Schema update or did you mess up the infrastructure.

Nothing to worry. You can verify the exchange version by running the following command

Get-ExchangeServer | fl name,admindisplayversion


I could you not answer myself here and wrote to the product group.

Brian Day from Microsoft Exchange product group has confirmed that there is no issue and it is just a wrong display name of the OAB.

Microsoft should be fixing it in the future Cumulative Updates.

“Default Offline Address List (Ex2013)” is actually Exchange 2016 Offline Address Book and not an Exchange 2013 Offline Address book in a non-Exchange 2013 infrastructure.

Run the following command to fix it.

set-OfflineAddressBook “Default Offline Address List (Ex2013)” -name “Default Offline Address List (Ex2016)”



So either wait for cumulative update or run the above mentioned command and fix it.

 

Prabhat Nigam

Microsoft MVP | Exchange Server

Team@MSExchangeGuru

15 Responses to “Exchange 2016 Wrong Offline Address Book Name”

  1. filip Says:

    Good find. You have a 2013 OAB without 2013 in the name, is this default when installing? I mean could you end up with 2 OAB with same name 🙂 Renaming the 2016 oab does this trigger a dl from all clients?

  2. Raman Says:

    Hello Prabhat,

    Thanks for the information. I recently installed Exchange 2016 in existing environment of Exchange 2013. After reading your article I checked OAB in my environment and found only Exchange 2013 OAB. Exchange 2016 did not even create Default Offline Address Book. I also checked “Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\ClientAccess\OAB” but there is no folder with OAB files. Like we have in Exchange 2013
    Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\ClientAccess\OAB\5feb5cd8-8d05-493f-9d97-054025b1b426

    I have never seen this before where Exchange does not create Default Offline Address Book automatically when you install Exchange.

    Do you have any ideas?
    Thanks,
    Raman

  3. Raman Says:

    Hello Prabhat,

    Sorry to bug on this once again but when I run Get-OfflineAddressBook it only shows me 1 Default Address List which is located on Exchange 2013. It does not show me Default Address List on Exchange 2016.

    I am trying to find out this reason for last many days.

    Thanks,
    Raman

  4. Prabhat Nigam Says:

    Move the same OAB to 2016 by moving system mailbox to 2016 database. It is by design, you are good.

  5. Raman Says:

    Thanks Prabhat it worked.

    Get-Mailbox -Arbitration | where {$_.PersistedCapabilities –like “*oab*”} | New-MoveRequest -TargetDatabase

  6. rdexch Says:

    In all my Environments (CU1 or not) it’s a “book” not a “list”. Command should be:
    Set-OfflineAddressBook “Default Offline Address Book (Ex2013)” -name “Default Offline Address Book Ex2016)”. – And yes, not fixed in CU1…

  7. Prabhat Nigam Says:

    Interesting. Thank you for the update

  8. Raman Says:

    Hello Prabhat,

    As, per our above communication of moving system mailbox from Exchange 2013 to 2016 start generating OAB on Exchange 2016.
    I have noticed that
    Get-OfflineAddressBook Shows Virtual Directory as 2013 Server

    “VirtualDirectories : {ExchServer2013\OAB (Default Web Site)}”

    I understand that I can change “VirtualDirectory” to Exchagne 2016 server but I have never done this before in migration from 2010 to 2013 but not it looks like this is also another step for OAB during migration from Exchange 2013 to 2016. It is not mentioned any where on Technet either.

    I just wanted to confirm with you that we need to change it as well?

    Thanks,
    Raman

  9. Prabhat Nigam Says:

    If you will change the name of the oab or create one in 2016, it should create vdir

  10. Bill Says:

    first rename it, then set it to use the correct IIS virtual directories on your new server
    the needed commands are as follows;
    Set-OfflineAddressBook -Identity “\Default Offline Address List (Ex2013)” -Name “Default Offline Address List (Ex2016)”

    then run
    Set-OfflineAddressBook -Identity “\Default Offline Address List (Ex2016)” -VirtualDirectories “newservername\OAB (Default Web Site)”, “newservernmame\OAB (Exchange Back End)”
    this is how I got it to work on the new 2016 server, migrated from 2013

  11. Prabhat Nigam Says:

    Nice. Thank you for sharing

  12. Bill Says:

    glad to help when I can..I struggled with this for a bit

  13. Exchange 2016 Migration – Finishing Touches – Post Migration Tasks – blog – Alexander Ollischer | Citrix | Microsoft Says:

    […] Exchange 2016 Wrong Offline Address Book Name […]

  14. Sam Says:

    Guys,

    Coexisting environment between 2016 and 2010. Installation of 2016 created “default offline address book (2013)” , so now I have two oabs.

    I read a lot of intructuons online to cfrate a new oab when you install 2016, but It seems it does that by default?

    Also, if I have an existing gal , address lists and oab created, do I need to recreate these for exchange 2016? Or can I just attach those to current 2016 databases. I know gal is not attached to any specific version of exchNge, unsure about oab?

  15. Prabhat Nigam Says:

    Exchange 2016 was designed differently so Exchange 2010 Oab when User is in Exchange 2010 DB and Exchange 2013 OAB when User is in Exchange 2013/2016 DB

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