Autoconfiguring Hosted Exchange and troubleshooting the stuck on "Waiting To Update This Folder..." problem.

Last week, I migrated e-mail services for a Torrey Pines bioscience company... from pop mail to Hosted Exchange. 

First and foremost, either export their accounts to a .pst or copy their existing .pst to be reimported later. Set that aside.

With their Hosted Exchange provider, Rackspace, they offer 2 methods of setting up the account: either by creating a domain alias from autodiscover.[customersdomainname.com] to point to autodiscover.mailsvr.com or by simply downloading the provided .prf file and importing it.

We'll cover importing a provided PRF today. Save the .prf (i.e. john.prf) somewhere you can remember, like C:\MCW. Open the run prompt and type the following: outlook.exe /importPRF C:\MCW\john.prf and hit enter.

This will automatically create a new profile that is autoconfigured to the hosted exchange account. You'll be asked to sign in at least twice with the users credentials, usually the e-mail address and password for the users account.

Once you see "Connected to Microsoft Exchange", import the .pst you copied/exported into the main folder. Your Hosted Exchange account will then upload all the imported mail, contacts, etc. into the account to keep everything in the "cloud". 

Make sure you inform the customer that this may take an hour or more, depending on the amount of mail they have, and they may experience some delay in sending/receiving mail while this process is being performed.

Common problem to troubleshoot

Occasionally, Outlook will get stuck on "Waiting to Update This Folder". If that happens, open the account (this varies between Outlook '03, '07 and '10... typically Tools/Accounts) and uncheck "Cached Exchange". Close Outlook and navigate to the folder containing your Outlook files, i.e. AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ and delete the Outlook.ost and extend.dat files.

Reopen Outlook, and once all data has been downloaded, open the account settings again, and recheck "Cached Exchange". 

Reverify mail is sending and receiving, and you should be off to the races!

Best Regards, 

Kyle B. Hanson 
Mobile Computer Wizard 

619-796-4629 Mobile 
858-345-0382 Office 
kyle@mobilecomputerwizard.com 
www.mobilecomputerwizard.com
< kyle@mobilecomputerwizard.com>