Outlook 2013 Free/Busy issue

[Varabently]

Hi all,

This is kind of a last resort for me, so I will be as descriptive as I can.

The situation: I work as the sole member of the IT department at a small engineering company (~45 employees). We have a small network with 3 servers: SharePoint, Domain Controller, and a file share server (2003 version). I purchased several copies of MS Office Home and Business 2013 (Outlook, Excel, Word and PP) for employee use. Most employees have been using 2007 with no issues whatsoever, but I wanted to try to jump forward since those are going on 7 years old. We have a hosted email server (so it's not in house), but our calendar is hosted locally on the file share server.

The issue: All of the 2013 users are unable to post free/busy information to the local server. The 2013 users are almost exclusively on new hardware (Windows 7 64 bit laptops/desktops), though the ones with old hardware have the same issue. They are able to connect to the file share location in windows explorer, and they are also able to see other people's calendars. They just cannot post their own. When you go into Outlook to configure the publish location, it asks you for how many months to post. I put in 2 months, the server info, then click OK. When I go back to confirm the settings took, the months to publish goes to 71, which is outside of the possible range. Indeed it won't let you set it to 71, but it defaults back to that when I try to save a valid number. I assume this is what is preventing the information from posting, but I don't know how to fix it.

What I've tried so far:
1. Posting the F/B information to an FTP site. I see the same issue. They can see other people's calendars, but not post their own. The months default to 71 after I try to save.
2. Changing the registry setting (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\offi ce\15.0\outlook\preferences] "fbpublishrange"=dword:00000015 "fbupdatesecs"=dword:00000384). This made no change. I'm not familiar with registries, but it seems close to this issue, albeit what I've done hasn't fixed it.
3. As mentioned, I confirmed the users have write access to the file share in question.
4. I added Outlook.exe to the firewall rule exclusions at both ends.
5. I made sure Outlook was running in administrator mode.
6. Posted on the TechNet forums regarding this. Another poster had the same issue, but never got a response. He was told to submit a service request, which without a contract costs ~$250.
7. Posted on another outlook specific website and got no solution.

Clearly, I am not going to purchase any more Outlook 2013s until I get this sorted, but in the mean time I have about 10 people (~20% of the company) who can't post their calendar information. The rest of the company can't schedule meetings with them either.

While I'm the IT department at this company, I frankly don't know that much about Outlook configuration, but I am getting some pressure to resolve this. Short of downgrading all these users to 2010/2007 (probably costing about $2000, way out of budget) and eating the cost of the 2013s (since I can't really use them), can anyone provide anything further I can try? Since it's global across the Office 2013 users, I didn't provide any details on the machines themselves beyond the operating system because I did not think that would be productive. If you would like more info, I can provide that.

If I do have to eat the cost of the software, I suppose it will be a lesson learned. I probably should have just bought one and made sure it functioned before diving in. If you know any other website or resource I can pose a question to, please let me know.

[Tradewind]

I uh, err...yeah. Good luck with this one.

If it were me, I'd downgrade them and just hang on to the 2013's until they release a Service Pack that may correct the problems. Then do the upgrade. This is probably something you should have tested before deploying it to 10 people

I mean other than just following the normal setup steps, it -should- work.

For Microsoft Outlook 2013 and Microsoft Outlook 2010:

Click the File tab, and then click Options.
In the left pane, click Calendar, and then click the Free/busy Options button.
Click the Permissions tab, and then click Other Free/busy.
Click to select the Publish at My Location check box under the Internet Free/busy section, and then type the fully qualified path of the server on which you will publish your free/busy information. You can use any valid URL format, such as http://... , file://\\... , or ftp://... . Free/busy files have the .vfb file name extension. The following is an example of a valid URL format:

ftp://Myserver/Freebusy/Myname.vfb

Note If the FTP server requires authentication and Outlook is installed on Windows Vista or Windows 7, you must use the following format:

ftp://username:password@Ftpservernam...bus/Myname.vfb
Where usernameassword is your user name and password.

A lesson in don't fix what ain't broke.

[Sthos]

I uh, err...yeah. Good luck with this one.

Indeed...

Not sure if you checked these:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291621
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958443
http://www.outlookforums.com/threads...cted-exchange/

Thats about all I can help with sadly...

[Varabently]

Thanks for the replies. I believe the outlookforums link is the one I actually posted in (mine is the last post), which hasn't found a resolution. The two Microsoft support articles are also ones I have seen before. I believe it may just be a bug, but it seems odd that it isn't more widespread and there aren't more complaints. The server is a full decade behind the Outlook version, so I'm wondering if there is some interaction there as well.

I may just have to take this one in the knee and downgrade them. As you say, I won't necessarily lose the licenses (since they can be moved, though it is a terrible pain to do so as I recently found out), but hopefully they will be usable in the future. I am wondering if I can't find some creative work around to the calendar issue that bypasses Outlook. I may have to explore SharePoint further to see if I can leverage that as a bandaid. I really doubt I am going to get approval for 10 new office 2010/2007 licenses at this point, so I will explore other options.

Thanks for the quick replies. This is new territory for me (managing the entire infrastructure), so I am pretty much learning as I go along. I'm pretty much creating my own IT policies and procedures as well, so there's a learning curve here I am struggling with.

[Tradewind]

Honestly the "easiest" way around it would be to bring your email in house and use a proper Exchange server to do it all.

[Varabently]

Aren't exchange servers expensive? We have one server ( the domain controller) that really doesn't do much, but I was under the impression Exchange was expensive to manage in house. Ours email costs next to nothing right now. This is way off topic, but are there some clear benefits to using exchange over a hosted email provider?

[Deleted]

Aren't exchange servers expensive? We have one server ( the domain controller) that really doesn't do much, but I was under the impression Exchange was expensive to manage in house. Ours email costs next to nothing right now. This is way off topic, but are there some clear benefits to using exchange over a hosted email provider?

No real benefits. For small companies, having a local Exchange server is NOT cost effective. What is your mail provider ? You should try Office 365, it's perfect for small business and have all the functionnalities you could ever need (outlook anywhere, outlook web app, integrated calendars...), and you only pay on a per user basis, so you should definitly give this a try

[Tradewind]

Aren't exchange servers expensive? We have one server ( the domain controller) that really doesn't do much, but I was under the impression Exchange was expensive to manage in house. Ours email costs next to nothing right now. This is way off topic, but are there some clear benefits to using exchange over a hosted email provider?

Aside from the initial cost of the software and CAL's (they were like $70 each when I had to do it last), long term cost is pretty much nothing. Other option is SBS or Server Essentials as it is called now, CAL's include User, Exchange and SQL all in one.

Office 365 can be very very expensive over the length of service. As you're looking at $160/user per year.