XCCC: "Unable to Perform the Operation" Error Message Occurs When You Use OWA to View Free-and-Busy Information

When you use Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) to access the free-and-busy information for another user, you may receive the following error message: After you receive this error message, you cannot access the free-and-busy information that you requested.

This problem may occur if the free-and-busy information that you are trying to access is stored on a server that has the following registry key: This registry key forces OWA to treat all clients as though they are running an earlier version of Exchange Server or as though they are reach clients. If the server that contains the free-and-busy information contains this registry key, and the server that you are using to access the free-and-busy information is using rich client methods to obtain the free-and-busy information from this server, you receive the error message that is described in the "Summary" section of this article.

To work around this problem, create a replica of the free-and-busy public folder from the server that OWA treats as though it is running an earlier version Exchange Server, and then copy this folder to the requesting client's server:

1. Start Exchange System Manager.
2. Under the server object, expand the first storage group, and then click Public Folder Store.
3. Click the Public Folders object, and then open the Schedule+ Free/Busy Information properties.
4. On the Replication tab, click Add, and then click the appropriate server to replicate the folder to.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Even though the request to the server that stores the free-and-busy information uses standard Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the response to the requesting server uses the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol. If the DefaultMailboxFolderSet registry value is set to 3, OWA cannot use WebDAV methods.