Member Avatar for gavstar

Hi everyone,

Got a major problem here I have my MD in Thailand connected to our site in UK trying to access his exchange mail. Once he initiates a VPN connection to the office he can open up outloook 2003 and the status comes up connected. However, a message keeps coming up saying waiting to update folder or "outlook is trying to retrieve data from exchange server".

This is causeing the following problems:

1) His mailbox is not syncronised. Mail he has sent is not appearing in the sent items box.
2) Missing chunks of mail. He is able to check this by comparing OWA to his account in OL2003.
3) Headaches on my part as the MD of the company thinks i'm inefficient!!!!! (this is the main one!)

Please anyone who can help.

Gavin

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Dani AI

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A compact troubleshooting checklist and practical fixes that expand on 's original report and 's protocol question. When Outlook shows “connected” but stalls while retrieving folders, the cause is usually network/DNS/VPN routing, RPC timeouts through a firewall, or a client/account configuration mismatch — not necessarily mailbox corruption. The steps below are ordered by frequency and diagnostic value.

  • Confirm account type and access method (Exchange/MAPI vs POP/IMAP). POP clients keep a local copy and can show different contents from server views; an Exchange/MAPI client should synchronise server items.
  • Verify name resolution and routing over the VPN. The client must resolve the Exchange server name to the internal address and have a route to that subnet; test with ping/tracert from the remote client.
  • Check firewalls and RPC ports. Exchange (MAPI) uses the RPC endpoint mapper plus dynamic RPC ports. For Exchange/Windows Server 2003-era systems, the server’s RPC dynamic range must be reachable; see Microsoft guidance on RPC dynamic port allocation for details.
  • Reproduce the problem with Outlook logging enabled (Tools → Options → Other → Advanced Options → Enable logging). Review the Outlook logs and the client/server Event Viewer for MAPI/RPC errors.
  • Try client-side workarounds: temporarily disable cached mode or, conversely, enable Cached Exchange Mode and rebuild the OST to force a clean resync; disable local AV/firewall mail scanning as a test.
  • If the VPN is unreliable, consider Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) as a supported alternative to keep RPC traffic through a single HTTP(S) channel.

Useful references: Microsoft documentation on configuring RPC dynamic ports and on Outlook RPC-over-HTTP (Outlook Anywhere) provide actionable configuration and firewall rules that are commonly required for reliable remote MAPI connections: and .

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Member Avatar for zelkea

Gavin,
Are you using SMTP or POP?

AJZ

Member Avatar for gavstar

We have a weird setup. We run mdaemon 4.0.5 which forwards mail to exchange accounts on the exchange 2003. so yeah pop3.

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