Microsoft Exchange Recovery Mode and How to Fix it

I had a user this week that was experiencing trouble with Outlook. Every time they opened the program they received a prompt similar to the one below.

Exchange is currently in recovery mode. You can either connect to your Exchange server using the network, work offline, or cancel this logon.

Not only was the prompt annoying, the shared calendar and contacts crashed the program whenever you tried to access them.

After doing some digging I found a solution that fixed the problem.

1. Start Outlook and select Connect.
2. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
3. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
4. Click the Microsoft Exchange Server account, and then click Change.
5. Click More Settings, and then click Advanced.
6. Clear the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box, and then click Apply.
7. Instead of exiting Outlook at this point click Offline Folder File Settings, and then click Disable Offline Use.
8. Click Yes to the prompt, OK, Next, and Finish
9. Close Outlook and start it again.
10. Repeat steps 1-5
11. Now reselect the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box, exit, and then restart Outlook.

That’s it now Outlook will no longer give the prompt and everything will be back to normal.