This infuriatingly happens to me a lot! Every time the fix is the same, (but is a little impractical). Essentially you attempt to log in to ECP (Exchange Admin Center), you a prompted for your credentials, then you just get a ‘500 Error”.
The website cannot display the page
HTTP 500
Most likely causes:
•The website is under maintenance.
•The website has a programming error.
What you can try:
Refresh the page.
Go back to the previous page.
Exchange 500 Error: Fix
Firstly (let’s check the basics,) make sure all the services are up and running, (this can take a while).
Start All Exchange Services
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Get-Service *Exchange* | Start-Service
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I can see that my ECP virtual directory is setup correctly
So the most common advice out there is to removeethe virtual directories, and recreate them, but when I attempt to remove them I get the error;
The operation couldn’t be performed because object ‘EX-SERVER-NAME\owa <Default Web Site>’ couldn’t be found on
‘DC-NAME.pnl.com’.
There are some posts that suggest (I simply re-sync my Exchange to my Domain Controller). But I’m not really sure how thats possible, (without a reinstall?). If someone would like to post below an alternative solution I’d be happy to publish it?
This is how I end up fixing it every time, which impractical because it involves downtime! Download the latest Cumulative update, mount the the CD image, and run;
YES I ACCEPT: That’s like using a sack of sledgehammers to crack a nut, but it works. As I’ve pointed out above, I’m happy to publish a more elegant solution, if someone posts one below.
Exchange 500 Error Gone
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Note: Below I’m using Exchange 2016, but the same approach will work for previous versions.
There are a load of reasons why you might want to do this, but before you go off in this direction consider why you are doing this in the first place. For example, if the user requesting this does not need an Exchange mailbox, i.e. because they only use their Gmail account then it’s probably a better idea to make them a mail-user. (That’s an AD user account, that has an external mailbox, and does not have an Exchange mailbox). For staff e.g. external contractors, part time staff, holiday cover staff, Mail-users might be a better fit.
If you are still reading you have a user with an Exchange mailbox, and you want to forward their email to an Email address outside your organisation, there are many ways of enabling forwarding, but fundamentally there’s only two things to consider;
Do you still want mail to get delivered to their Exchange mailbox while forwarding?
What is the external Email address you want to forward to?
Armed with this information you can decide what approach you want to take to achieve this.
Solution
Option 1: Get The User to Set Up Mail Forwarding in OWA
The best option for the lazy admin! “Oh, are you aware you can set this up yourself?” Even give them this URL as a walkthrough if you like 🙂
From within Outlook Web App open your ‘Options’
Mail > Inbox and Sweep Rules > Inbox Rules > Add
Note: On older versions of OWA look in Organize email > inbox rules > Add.
Give the rule a name > Set to [Apply to all messages] > Forward Redirect or Send > Forward Message To.
Note: Setting Redirect instead of Forward will NOT keep a copy in you local Exchange Mailbox.
Enter the external email address to forward to > Save.
OK.
Option 2: Enable Mail Forwarding In Exchange Admin Center
To forward mail externally for an ‘Exchange Mailbox User’, you need to create a ‘Contact’. A contact is an active directory object (not a user) that has an email address (in our case the external one). Log into Exchange Admin Center > Recipients > Contacts > Add > Mail Contact.
Create a contact and give it a sensible name (so when it appears in the Global Address List it’s obvious what it is*)
*Note: You can hide them from the GAL if you like, with the following PowerShell;
On the Mailbox Tab, locate the user you want to setup forwarding for, and edit them.
Mailbox Features > Scroll Down to ‘Mail Flow‘ > View Details > Tick ‘Enable Forwarding‘ > Browse to the CONTACT you created earlier > OK.
Note: You may also want to select “Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox”.
Option 3: Setup Mailbox Forwarding With PowerShell
There’s a lot of rubbish written about this online, sites give you a line of PowerShell to paste in and it does not work, because there’s other things you need to do to make this work.
Example 1: Couldn’t find object “pete@externaldomain.com“. Please make sure that it was spelled correctly or specify a different..
If you setup mail forwarding using the ExternalEmailAddress you need to CREATE A CONTACT FIRST! Or you see the error above.
To Setup External Forwarding and Keep a Local Copy of the Email
Note: It’s the ‘$false‘ that does not maintain the local copy.
What about ExternalSMTPEmailAddress?
OK there’s another parameter you can set, it’s called ExternalSMTPAddress when you set this you DON’T NEED A CONTACT. This sounds great and again theres a load of blog posts that give you the PowerShell to set this for a user AND IT DOES NOT WORK!
Note: If you setup mail forwarding using this method the forwarding address is NOT VIEWABLE IN THE GUI, if you have enabled keep a local copy, that IS viewable.
Example 2 : My ExternalSMTPAddress Forwarder is not working?
This is because what other sites don’t tell you is unless you specified the target domain (for the remote email address), as AutoForwardEnabled it has a habit of not working!
See Below to setup Mail forwarding with ExternalSMTPAddress properly.
To Setup External Forwarding and Keep a Local Copy of the Email
Note: It’s the ‘$false‘ that does not maintain the local copy.
Removing Mail Forwarding For a User
I wont insult your intelligence and tell you how to do this in the GUI just reverse engineer the above, but if you used ForwardingSMTPAddress you wont see it in the GUI! To remove ALL forwarding for a user, use the following command;
Out of the box, if you want to log into Outlook Web App, you need to use the Domain\Username format, like so;
Seeing as how Microsoft are making a big song and dance about using UPN’s to log into Office 365, I thought they might have changed from the NT4 way of doing things, but hey what do I know?
As we all know users are stupid, Domain\Username is up there with string theory and quantum mechanics. So how do you change the format to simply Username?
Solution
Log into the Exchange eAdmin Center > Servers > Virtual Directories > Locate OWA > Edit.
Authentication Tab > Use Forms Based Authentication > User name only >Browse > Select your domain > OK > OK.
Now on the server that’s hosting the OWA Website you need to Restart IIS.
[box]iisreset /noforce[/box]
Now your users can authenticate with just their username.
Exchange Admin Center Logon Note
This will also change the login method for the Exchange Admin Center website (ECP). because by default it has this set in it’s properties;
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When using the Exchange Admin Center with Exchange 2013, on a Server Running Internet Explorer Version 10, you see the following error (particularly when working on the recipients > mailboxes tab!
Problem Details
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: IEXPLORE.EXE
Application Version: 10.0.9200.16384
Application Timestamp: 50107ee0
Fault Module Name: msvcrt.dll
Fault Module Version: 7.0.9200.16384
Fault Module Timestamp: 5010ae12
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000986a
OS Version: 6.2.9200.2.0.0.400.8
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: a65c
Additional Information 2: a65c2884b2d8aca525c1cbb50e388db9
Additional Information 3: 396e
Additional Information 4: 396e9fe5e0fa1a3f9a73d5b2c9681128
You can also round the problem by accessing the Exchange Admin Center from a client (Windows running IE10 works fine). If you must access it on the server install the hofix or use Firefox
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Seen (usually on a server) when trying to connect to either Outlook Web App, or The Exchange Admin Center.
To use Microsoft Outlook Web App, browser settings must allow scripts to run. For information about how to allow scripts, consult the Help for your browser. If your browser doesn’t support scripts, you can download Microsoft Internet Explorer for access to Outlook Web App.
Solution
You have two options, the first is more sensible (and more secure) so that would be my preference.
Option 1
1. From Internet Explorer Options > Security > Trusted Sites > Add the URL of OWA or ECP > Close > Apply > OK.
Option 2
1. From Internet Explorer Options > Security > Internet > Custom Level > Allow Scriptlets > Enable > OK > Apply > OK.
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