Error message in Exchange Server: "The Delegate page is not available. Unable to access Outlook folder."

When you try to access the Delegate tab in the Microsoft Outlook client, you may receive the following error message:

This error may be caused by a corrupted Exchange Server mailbox. In an Exchange 2000 mixed mode organization, this error may be caused by an incorrect homeMTA attribute.

Note When this issue is caused by an incorrect homeMTA attribute, users cannot add users from the Exchange Global Address List to their personal distribution lists.

Additionally, if you have an incorrect value in the Secretary field, you receive the same error message. For example, the following contains an incorrect value for the Secretary attribute: In this example, the Secretary attribute points to a deleted object of the domain. Deleted Objects should not be set. Or the Secretary attribute should point to a valid user.

To work around this problem, use one or both of the following methods, as appropriate to your situation:

Method 1: Re-create the Exchange mailbox

1. Download all the information in the mailbox to a .pst file (personal folder) by changing the delivery location in the properties for the Exchange Server service.
2. Remove the corrupted mailbox by using the Exchange Server Administrator program, and then create a new Exchange Server mailbox.
3. Mail from the personal folders can be uploaded to the server again by manually copying the messages back to the mailbox folders.

Method 2: Verify the Exchange homeMTA attribute

By using the Microsoft Active Directory Directory Service

To resolve this behavior by using Active Directory, perform both of the following steps:

Important You must complete step 1 and step 2 in succession for each user who experiences this behavior.

Step 1: Verify the information that is associated with the homeMTA attribute

Use the ADSI Edit utility to obtain the information that is associated with the homeMTA attribute of the user account that experiences this problem. To do so, follow these steps. WARNING : If you use the ADSI Edit snap-in, the LDP utility, or any other LDAP version 3 client, and you incorrectly modify the attributes of Active Directory objects, you can cause serious problems. These problems may require you to reinstall Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, or both. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems that occur if you incorrectly modify Active Directory object attributes can be solved. Modify these attributes at your own risk.

1. Start ADSI Edit. To do so, click Start, click Run, type adsiedit.msc in the Open box, and then click OK.
   
   Note The ADSI Edit tool is located in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Support Tools. If this tool is not installed, you can install the tool from the Microsoft Windows 2000 CD-ROM. The full path is:
   Support\Tools\Setup.exe.
2. Expand Domain NC ( servername.example.com ) (where servername is the name of the domain controller and where example.com is the name of the domain), expand DC= example,DC= com.
3. Expand the container that contains the user account that you want; for example, expand CN=Users.
4. Right-click the user account container that you want; for example, right-click CN= UserName, and then click Properties.
5. In the Select which properties to view list, click Both.
6. In the Select a property to view list, click homeMTA.
7. In the Value(s) box, note the value for the homeMTA property.

If the value of the homeMTA attribute is not correct, you must update the user account by entering the correct value.

For example, the following is an incorrect value for the homeMTA attribute: Note In this example, the value of the homeMTA attribute is in the Deleted Objects folder of the domain. In this scenario, the value of the homeMTA attribute must be in CN= ServerName.

The following is an example of a correct value for the homeMTA attribute: To change the value of the homeMTA attribute:

1. In the Value(s) box, note the value for the homeMTA property.
2. Type the correct value in the Edit Attribute box, click Set, click Apply, and then click OK.

Note The easiest way to enter the correct value for the homeMTA attribute is to use ADSI Edit to obtain the correct value for a user who is in the same Exchange Server 5.5 site and who does not experience the issue that is described in the "Symptoms" section of this article. Copy the value of the homeMTA attribute from the user who has the correct value, and then paste it in the Edit Attribute box of the user who has the value that is not valid.

If there are no users in the Exchange Server 5.5 site that you can copy the correct value from, use the examples that are provided earlier in this article to type the correct value manually. You must adapt the examples for your Exchange Server organization.

Step 2: Update the recipient information

1. In the Select a property to view list, click msExchALObjectVersion.
2. In the Value(s) box, note the value for the msExchALObjectVersion property.
3. Increment the value for the msExchALObjectVersion property by 500.
   
   For example, if the value is 40, change it to 540. To do so, in the Edit Attribute box, type 540, click Set, click Apply, and then click OK.
   
   Note An alternative to incrementing msExchALObjectVersion by 500 is to verify the msExchALObjectVersion attribute in Active Directory by using ADSI Edit, and then verify the Object-Version on the mailbox in the raw directory of Exchange Server 5.5. Compare the numbers, and then increment the value in Active Directory to 10 more than the value that appears in the Exchange Server 5.5 raw directory. This procedure makes sure that you have correctly incremented this value. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
   258257 XADM: How to Verify the Object-Version When You Troubleshoot Directory Replication Problems
4. Quit ADSI Edit.

After you have edited the information that is associated with the homeMTA attribute for each user who experiences this behavior, start Active Directory Connector Manager, right-click the recipient connection agreement that is associated with the Exchange Server 5.5 site that the user belongs to, and then click Replicate Now to force replication.

By using the Exchange Administrator program

When the homeMTA information in the Exchange 5.5 directory is correct for the Exchange 5.5 mailbox, but the information is incorrect in Active Directory, you can use Exchange Administrator to resolve this issue. To do so:

1. Start Exchange Administrator. To do so, click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click Microsoft Exchange Administrator.
2. On the Tools menu, click Directory Export.
3. In the Home server list, click All.
4. Click to select the Include subcontainers check box.
5. Under Export objects, click to select the following check boxes:
   • Mailbox
   • Custom recipient
   • Distribution list
6. Under Logging level, click High.
7. Under Character set, click ANSI (if it is not already selected).
8. Click Export File, locate the folder where you want to save the file, type the file name that you want in the File name box, click Open, and then click Yes when you are prompted to create a new file.
9. Click Container, expand the domain object, click the Recipients container, and then click OK.
10. Click Export to export the information to the comma-separated values (.csv) file that you created.
11. On the message that appears that indicates that the directory export is complete, click OK.
12. Start Microsoft Excel, and then open the .csv file that you exported the directory information to.
13. Delete all the columns except for the Obj-Class column and the Directory Name column in the .csv file.
    
    Important Delete the actual columns and not just the information that they contain. Make sure there are no empty columns between the Obj-Class and the Directory Name columns.
14. In row 1 of a new column, type Custom Attribute 15.
15. In the Custom Attribute 15 column, type 1 in each row that corresponds to an item. Make sure that the worksheet appears similar to the following table:

    Obj-Class	Directory Name	Custom Attribute 15
    Mailbox	User1	1
    Mailbox	User2	1
    Mailbox	User3	1
    Mailbox	User4	1

16. Save the file, and then quit Excel.
17. Start Exchange Administrator.
18. On the Tools menu, click Directory Import.
19. Click Import File, click the .csv file that you saved, and then click Open.
20. Under Multivalued Properties, click Overwrite, and then click Import.
21. In the message that indicates that the directory import is complete, click OK.
22. Repeat steps 1 through 21 for the recipients containers in each site in your Exchange organization.
23. Start the Active Directory Connection Manager, and then replicate both the Recipient Connection Agreement and the Configuration Connection Agreement (config_CA).

To remove the Custom Attribute 15 values from your Exchange 5.5 directory, open the .csv file that you saved in step 16, type ~del under the Custom Attribute 15 column for each row that corresponds to an item. Make sure that the worksheet appears similar to the following table:

Save and then import this new .csv file into the directory. When you do so, click Overwrite under Multivalued Properties.