Hard Answers

How NOT To Redirect OWA On Exchange 2010

How NOT to redirect OWA on Exchange 2010

How to simplify the Exchange 2010 OWA address without causing all sorts of problems.

After having broken this myself, I post this on the off-chance this helps someone else... the moral of the story is, do not use IIS Manager.

Let’s say you want to perform a really simple task, redirect https://mail.yoursite.com to https://mail.yoursite.com/owa/ so that people can get to Outlook Web Access without having to remember to type /owa/ all the time.

Unfortunately, while this is simple to do in Exchange 2010, it’s also very stupid, and different to how it was done in the past.

There’s any number of guides on the internet showing you how to do it in IIS Manager – but don’t. It will almost certainly break something.

Instead, use the script from Redirecting the root web site to /owa and forcing SSL in Exchange 2010

And in case you already broke something, here’s two of the things I broke, and how to fix them:

First the offline address books stopped working. To fix this, follow this guide: OAB issues after simplifying the OWA 2010 URL

The other was that a redirect had been placed on the owa virtual directory, and removing this also removed the redirect from the Public virtual directory. Similarly, adding a redirect to the Public virtual directory added one to owa. So check that your owa virtual directory doesn’t have a redirect, and check that your Public, Exchange and Exchweb virtual directories do. If so, you’re all good. Otherwise, go here and do this: Redirect Virtual Folder

Note that you have to delete the <httpRedirect enabled="false" /> line and run the appcmd lines as shown in that thread.

More Information

Information gathered from the following:

• Simplify the Outlook Web App URL – WARNING: DO NOT DO THIS
• Redirecting OWA URLs in Exchange 2010 – WARNING: DO NOT DO THIS
• Redirect Virtual Folder
• OAB issues after simplifying the OWA 2010 URL
• Redirecting the root web site to /owa and forcing SSL in Exchange 2010

Updated about 5 mths, 25 days ago (August 30, 2011). Know a better answer? Let us know!

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