Outlook AutoDiscover on Non Domain PCs

I was recently asked about a user reporting problems accessing their Out of Office and Shared Outlook Calendars when accessing Outlook from a Non-Domain Computer. Additionally the user was not able to create an Autodiscover record on the DNS for their public Domain.

Outlook uses the domain of your smtp email account in outlook to try and contact the Exchange Client Access Server using the default methods as described in the Exchange 2007 Autodiscover Service Whitepaper.

However when the computer is in a WORKGROUP and the email domains FQDN cannot be resolved from the Internet then Outlook will be unable to connect to Autodiscover. In order to address this a local Autodiscover.xml file will need to be created and referenced on the local computer.

A local Autodiscover.xml file needs to be created, a sample of which can be found below. This files needs to be copied to a location which the PC can access, if no network share is available then copy the file to a folder on your C drive, and share that folder as hidden share.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Autodiscover xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/responseschema/2006">

<Response xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/outlook/responseschema/2006a">

<Account>

<AccountType>email</AccountType>

<Action>redirectUrl</Action>

<RedirectUrl>https://autodiscover.EMAILFQDN/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml</RedirectUrl>

</Account>

</Response>

</Autodiscover>

Launch RegEdit from Start-Run

Browse to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover

Right Click AutoDiscover and create a new STRING value

1. In the Name field, enter the smtp domain of the user. E.g. wordpress.com
2. In the Value Data field, enter the location of the XML file as UNC path. E.g. \\LOCALPC\c$\autodiscover.xml

Right Click AutoDiscover and create a new DWORD value

1. In Value Name enter: PreferLocalXML
2. In Data enter: 1

Close RegEdit

Now, launch Microsoft Outlook and test OOF and Calendars. If this fails – Press the CTRL key and right click the Outlook icon in Task Bar and select Test Auto Configuration. Enter the email address, password details, untick Use Guesssmart and click Test. This should detail any issues with the Autodiscover.