Config 365- Connecting Outlook to an Office 365 mailbox

MessageOps Config365 is small application which simply creates a new Outlook profile connected to an Office 365 mailbox.  It was created as a solution to work around various Autodiscover issues that exist when performing a staged migration to Office 365.  It is designed to be run by the end user after their migration.  The Config365 interface is shown below:

When the user executes Config365, the must first enter their Office 365 username and password.  The options they have are:

• Attach Existing PST files – If their existing on premise Outlook Profile has PST files attached to it, those PST files will be attached to the new Office 365 profile.
• Prefer Local XML – When selected this will write values to the registry which essentially disable Autodiscover and hard code Outlook to use the Office 365 servers.  Checking this box has the potential to cause problems if the Office 365 server names change, so if used, the registry keys should be removed when all users are migrated.
• Connect other Accounts - When selected any existing POP, IMAP and HTTPS accounts that exist will be copied to the new profile.  NOTE, old Exchange accounts are not connected to new Outlook 2010 profile.

When the Configure Button is clicked a new Outlook profile will be created which is connected to the user’s Office 365 mailbox.

Additional Information

If you are migrating from Exchange 2003 or already have the Autodiscover records pointing to Office 365, you should be able to run the application with the default settings (Prefer Local XML unchecked).

If you are migrating from Exchange 2007/2010, then you likely have the Autodiscover records created and pointing to your local Exchange environment.  In this scenario it is necessary to select the Prefer Local XML option to disable the normal Autodiscover process.  If you do not check the Prefer Local XML option, a new profile will be created, and it will be connected to the Office 365, but after a reboot, Outlook will likely attempt to connect back to the local Exchange Server.

When the Prefer Local XML option is selected the following registry keys are set to the values below.

Outlook 2007:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover

Outlook 2010:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover

ExcludeHttpRedirect=0
ExcludeHttpsAutodiscoverDomain=1
ExcludeHttpsRootDomain=1
ExcludeScpLookup=1
ExcludeSrvRecord=1
PreferLocalXML=1

Download

Config 365 is a free application which can be accessed at config365.com .  It’s available as a ClickOnce application or a standalone .exe file.

Go to Config365.com

Support

Contact support@messageops.com with any issues you encounter.