Exchange error 0x8004010F fix

For the last couple of days, Outlook has been throwing up the following error:

Task 'Microsoft Exchange Server' reported error
(0x8004010F): 'The operation failed. An object could not be found.'

Googling it wasn’t much help, as there seemed to be more than 20 reasons for the fault. Emails were syncing OK, and everything else appeared to be normal. However, checking the Exchange (2003) server, and looking at the Offline Address List settings (alluded to in the majority of the search results), I found another error message. When trying to rebuild the offline address book, this came up:

There are no bindings.
Facility: Win32
ID no: c00706b6
Exchange System Manager

This gave me a bit more to go on, and thanks to this page, I eventually found this solution on Microsoft’s website.

Basically, I deleted the old offline address list, created a new one, pointed it at the Default Global Address List, then waited a short while for the servers to catch on to the change. I could then set the new offline address list as the default, and then rebuild it.

Then it was a case of waiting for the next list sync (I triggered it by changing the update interval for the offline list to a custom one forcing an update in the next 15 minutes) and then quitting Outlook on my machine, reopening it, and then downloading the address book from Tools > Send/Receive > Download Address Book…

Phew!