Bug 8916 – Microsoft Outlook Web Access Sometimes Inoperative

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WORKSFORME
• Component: New Bugs

[Matt Fago]

When accessing a mailbox via Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) some of the functionality is broken. I believe this is OWA with MS Exchange 2000 (not 2003).

What happened:
I wrote a new email in OWA, saving a draft, and then sending the message. Switching to "Sent" folder and clicking on the just-sent message does not do anything (no error message or anything, although the progress bar DOES show that Safari loaded something). Yet clicking on another message in "Sent" does bring up that message. Sending another message and then clicking on the newer message in "Sent" does not reproduce the behavior (the email opens). This is reproduceable (for this message only) across both OWA and Safari sessions. It does NOT occur with Firefox. I wouldn't be surprised if it's FUBARED javascript from OWA. Nevertheless, this IMHO is somewhat serious.

Note that option-clicking on the message gives "Failed to open page. See Activity window for details."
Looking at this gives "error."

Looking at the Javascript console shows nothing.

Link is:
https://[URL deleted]/exchange/matt.fago.ctr/Sent%20Items/Out%20of%20the%20office;%20VVICB-5.EML?Cmd=open

Wish I could give access to my account or the server, but I cannot.... perhaps someone knows more about OWA than I?

I'll also add this to Radar.

[Matt Fago]

Oddly enough, I can open the message in Safari if I first save it in Firefox.

I think that somehow Safari is not correctly formatting the URL that it is sending to OWA? I can reproduce this 100% by sending an email with a semi-colon in the subject line of the email, e.g., "test ; test"

Copying the URL for the message (i.e. by ctrl-clicking on the link) and pasting it directly into the address bar also recreates the behavior.

Note that Firefox also gives the URL as:

https://[URL deleted]/exchange/matt.fago.ctr/Sent%20Items/Out%20of%20the%20office;%20VVICB-5.EML?Cmd=open

yet it still opens correctly in Firefox, but not Safari.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Is your Exchange server accessible via HTTP, too? It would be extremely helpful to capture and compare what Firefox and Safari send to it:

sudo tcpdump -Avvvps0 port 80

[Matt Fago]

Sorry, the server is https only. Anything else I can do?

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Sorry, the server is https only. Anything else I can do?

You could try using an HTTPS proxy between your web browser and the web site to capture information.  I found this one searching for "https debug proxy" on Google:

http://www.xk72.com/charles/

After you get traces doing the same thing (e.g., looking at the message in the Sent Items folder) of Firefox and Safari, you can compare them to determine what Safari may be doing wrong.

I would be VERY CAUTIOUS about posting the traces, though, since there could be private information in them (like the hostname and/or IP address of the site you're using).

It would be good to find out (from your sys admins?) what exact version of OWA you're running.

It would also be helpful to post the RADAR bug number on this bug.  (And post a link to the Bugzilla bug in BugReporter, if you haven't already done so.)

[Matt Fago]

Radar Bug number: 4548029

The OWA server version:  2000 SP3

I'll look into the proxy, and have added cross-references for my bugs.

[Matt Fago]

I'm sorry but I have been informed that studying https traffic via a "man in the middle" proxy is not allowable and could have very serious personal legal consequences. Not exactly sure how they could tell, but the potential consequences are too severe to warrant the risk.

I hope that there is someone else with access to the same version of OWA that could be of more assistance.

This bug is 100% reproducable for me with any email message with a ";" in the subject line.

[David Kilzer (:ddkilzer)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I hope that there is someone else with access to the same version of OWA that
> could be of more assistance.

My company was using the previous version of OWA, but they upgraded to 2003 recently.  Sorry.

Another thing you could try is to save the source of the web page from Safari (or Firefox), then alter the URLs to post/get to a different server that would dump the differences between the browsers.

[Daniel Bates]

Is this still an issue?

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

No confirmations of follow-ups in almost 5 years, resolving.