Issue
In the past two weeks I’ve had two customer environments come to me with the same issue. Random Outlook 2013 clients are unable to configure their Out Of Office settings. Specifically, they would get an error message when trying to open their OOF settings to set them. Some users had no issue while others got the error. Both environments were Exchange 2007 on latest Service Pack/Update Rollup & had a few users running Outlook 2013; only a few of which were having this issue.
Resolution
After some searching online I found this thread pointing to a recent (November 12th 2013) Outlook Security Update as the culprit. In my case, after uninstalling KB2837618, rebooting the client, & re-creating the Outlook Profile (a profile repair did not work) then Out Of Office started working again.
In fact, after reading the full KB it appears this is a known issue:
- If you are using Outlook to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 mailbox:
- You receive an error message that resembles either of the following when you try to configure Automatic Replies (Out of Office):
Your automatic reply settings cannot be displayed because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.
- You cannot retrieve Free/Busy data for calendar scheduling.
- Add-ins that use the Account.SmtpAddress property no longer work.
These features rely on an underlying Autodiscover technology. After you install this security update, Autodiscover may fail for Exchange 2007 configurations. Therefore, Outlook features that rely on Autodiscover will also stop working.
Microsoft is researching this problem and will post more information in this article when it becomes available.
- You receive an error message that resembles either of the following when you try to configure Automatic Replies (Out of Office):
It appears the reason only random Outlook 2013 clients were experiencing the issue was because not all of them were up to date via Microsoft Update. Of course most Exchange folks will never read all the release notes of KBs pushed to Outlook via Microsoft Update ahead of time. I suppose the answer to an actual admin (which I am not) who complains will be “What, you don’t use WSUS & test every update for Office?” 😀
Update:
As Jim Morris pointed out in the comments below, the issue is addressed in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2850061
Troubleshooting Exchange 
Good to know, thanks for sharing!
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I have the same problem, but I do not have any of those updates installed on my PC. There are other PCs in the network that OOO reply works just fine. Only a couple that don’t. Any other suggestions?
Your solution worked perfectly in my case where a client of mine has the exact same problem – Outlook 2013 connecting to Exchange 2007. Just annoying have to recreate the Outlook profile though but your solution worked so thanks for sharing this.
Microsoft has updated the notes for KB2837618 to include a fix for this issue. The fix is only available via the download center and isn’t being distributed via Windows Update, apparently.
Link to the KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2837618
The fix it points to is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2850061
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> As Jim Morris pointed out in the comments below, the issue is addressed in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2850061
Thanks, but that “does not apply to Office 2013 Click-to-Run editions such as Microsoft Office 365 Home”, which, MORE THAN A YEAR LATER, MICROSOFT, is still broken.