2013-11-26

Now that Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) has made its appearance (a little delayed to make sure that quality is high), it seems appropriate to review the set of bug fixes included in the update as reported by Microsoft in KB2892464. These are the fixes related to the on-premises version of Exchange; other fixes have been made for Exchange Online but are not reported here because they don’t impact on-premises customers. I’ve added some commentary on each of the fixes, some of which are the type that are surprisingly still being found in a product a year after its initial release.

Some new functionality is also included in Exchange 2013 CU3. Details can be found on the EHLO blog.

Anyway, upwards and onwards…

Follow Tony @12Knocksinna

KB

Topic

Comment

2874216

MS13-061 security fix

The fix that caused all the problems for Exchange 2013 CU2 is included in CU3.

2865161

Errors copying items for eDiscovery searches

Occurs if you attempt to copy unsearchable items (those that cannot be fully indexed for some reason).

2871980

Child domains are not displayed for selection when you create a mailbox using EAC

EAC is supposed to display the names of the root and all child domains when you create mailboxes. It doesn’t before CU3, it does afterwards.

2878160

“The Active Directory user wasn’t found” error when you create or update an In-Place eDiscovery search

Another child domain issue caused because the cmdlets used to create or modify eDiscovery searches (New-MailboxSearch and Set-MailboxSearch) access a local domain controller rather than a GC. All OK now.

2882608

Exchange Server 2013 does not share the inproxy.dll file

Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2010 SP3 share this proxy file. The installation of CU1 forces EMS to use the Exchange 2013 version, which slows down Exchange 2010 SP3. It’s faster now.

2886115

Retention policies are not applied to Exchange Server 2013 mailboxes when user accounts are on different domains

Another issue caused by an insistence on using a local domain controller. The DC is writeable, which is good, but it doesn’t contain accounts from other domains, so the Managed Folder Assistant is dead out of luck when it comes to apply retention policies.

2888274

WebClientReadFormQueryString string and WebClientEditFormQueryString string return incorrect URLs

These strings can be used to read an item with Outlook Web App. Their format changed in Exchange 2013. No one seemed to have noticed until now.

2888315

Event 2112 or 2180 is logged when you try to back up a database

Backup failures are not good. The problem is caused by an internal structure not being initialized correctly. It seems strange that this hasn’t been fixed until CU3, but maybe no one takes backups anymore.

2888612

Retention policy does not work after you run a cmdlet

The KB reports that a problem exists when you apply a default archive tag to a mailbox (to move items to an archive after a set period); I assume that “after you run a cmdlet” applies when the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant cmdlet is used to apply the policy to the mailbox because I certainly haven’t noticed any problems with default archive tags when MFA runs in the background. Curious!

2889786

Sign-in format for Outlook Web App on mobile devices is not adjusted according to the Set-OwaVirtualDirectory cmdlet

You can run Set-OWAVirtualDirectory in an attempt to have devices use the domain\user form of authentication but OWA will ignore this on mobile devices because it is hardcoded to use email addresses (UPN) to ease the dull and dreary lives of mobile users. Which is the way it should be, isn’t it?

2890650

Items in the Drafts folder are not stamped with the retention policy tag in Exchange 2010 or 2013

Draft items are looked at by MFA the first time a mailbox is processed but ignored thereafter. Not too big a problem because items shouldn’t really remain in the Drafts folder long enough for anyone to worry about retention. Should they?

2895487

“Copy Search Results” option does not work

Looks as if eDiscovery search results occasionally report different numbers (found items versus expected), which causes its copy mechanism to fail, as you might expect when number checks fail.

2895500

DBCS characters appear garbled when you run some PowerShell scripts in EMS

Exchange includes language-specific strings for its scripts in the installation kit. Some scripts appear to want to use American text instead of double-byte character set (DBCS), which causes some interesting results when they are run using Japanese or a similar language.

2895678

“Nombre de usuario\dominio” is displayed unexpectedly on the Spanish version of the OWA and EAC logon pages

An error in translation causes OWA to look for users to enter User\Domain rather than the proper way around, which then means that they can’t log in – very frustrating (unless they know the proper format).

2902929

You cannot forward an external meeting request

Neither Outlook nor OWA is able to forward a meeting request received from an external sender. Looks like Exchange gets its permissions messed up. All fixed now.

2902933

“Generate incident report” does not display the “Bcc” field

An incident report can be generated if someone violates a data loss prevention policy, which can contain information taken from the message that caused the incident. It seems like the BCC field from the message is ignored.

2902934

Korean language localization issue in OWA

Some localization issues existed in the Korean translation for OWA; I don’t speak Korean so I don’t know what these problems are, but clearly someone noticed.

2902936

You cannot change SMTP addresses for distribution groups by using EAC

Seems like EAC has a few problems dealing with SMTP addresses for distribution groups because someone forgot to convert the format collected by the console into the format expected by the Set-DistributionGroup cmdlet running underneath. When in doubt, use EMS… what more can be said?

2902938

You cannot preview Office documents in shared folders (mailboxes) by using OWA

OWA returns the address of the shared mailbox instead of the user’s credentials and they don’t match the desired set, so access fails.

2902939

EMS connection error when you separately install an Exchange Server 2013 Mailbox server and a Client Access server

Looks like some date and time conversion problems stop EMS working if a non-English mailbox and non-English CAS server are deployed. Those who use English are not affected, but wouldn’t you think that this is the kind of thing that testing would have caught?

2883203

Exchange Server 2013 restarts frequently after Cumulative Update 2 is installed

The fix for the Managed Availability problem for multi-domain forests described in this blog post.

2890814

No redirection to the Outlook Web App URL for Exchange Online users in an Exchange hybrid deployment

Users who have an Exchange Online mailbox that connect to an on-premises server can’t be redirected because of a bad OWA URL. You can type in the proper outlook.com URL and everything works, so this is simply a case of a server getting its proverbial knickers in a knot.

Show more