Outlook Credential Prompt When Opening Exchange 2013 Public Folder

After completing an Exchange 2007 > 2013 migration recently, I was left with one issue that was preventing us from stamping the project as a roaring success and moving on:

Outlook 2013 users were sometimes receiving a single pop-up prompt for credentials whenever they opened the Public Folder (we have only one). One. Single. Prompt.

Google was frustratingly unhelpful because searching for "outlook prompts for username and password when opening public folders" or something similar just resulted in a lot of folks who were always getting a pop-up that wouldn't go away. It was usually caused by an authentication failure of some sort.

However, we were in a different boat - Users got the prompt once when they first launched Outlook and opened their public folders, but after entering it they could continue - authentication worked. Next time they logged in to their PC, it would happen again. Not a show stopper, but it definitely generated its share of support calls.

Repairing Mailbox Corruption in Exchange 2010

I recently got through recovering an SBS 2011 server after Active Directory face-planted in the middle of a workday. When I say recover, I mean I repeated the entire migration, using a cleaned up secondary DC - it was a fun weekend (expect another post about that experience). Although I thought we were in the clear, I got a call from the client about 24 hours after we had verified everything was working. He indicated that his iPhone had suddenly stopped receiving mail in the inbox (calendar, contacts, sent items were still fine) and throws up an error after spinning in circles for a few minutes that it "cannot connect to mail server".

Secure the Edge: Protecting Exchange 2007 Connectors

Many small companies employ a service such as AppRiver to provide affordable messaging security, but not many take the time to properly secure their Exchange connectors afterwards.