# Outlook 2003/Exchange 2007 - "Your Version of Outlook has been blocked..."



## mantis484 (Feb 24, 2009)

Hi, 

My organisation that has just rolled out an Exchange 2007 Server. 
I am a desktop support engineer for my unit. We are setting up access to the server through Outlook 2003. 

A small number of Outlook 2003 users get this error message when they are using a .prf file to configure their clients. 

*"Your Exchange Server administrator has blocked the version of Outlook that you are using. Contact your administrator for assistance."*

*This is XP SP2 running Outlook 2003 (error occurs on Office, Office SP2 and Office SP3) connecting to Exchange 2007. *

I have tried tried applying SP2 and SP3 to Office and completely reinstalling Office but it still occurs. 

I am told by the Server Administrators that this is a local problem so I am not getting any help from them. I tend to believe them that it's not server side because I set one of the profiles up on two PCs next to eachother. On one it worked fine but on the other it had this error message. I could not see a difference in the two Outlook installations. 


I have read this article here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924625 but a lot of the questions it asks and tests involve having administrator access over the server which I do not have. 

Does anyone know of anything in the local Office installation that I do have control over that has been known to cause this?

All the best, 

mantis484


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## asidman (Nov 28, 2008)

*Re: Outlook 2003/Exchange 2007 - "Your Version of Outlook has been blocked..."*

Try this KB instead - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555851
This is the exact reason why Office 2007 should be rolled out before Exchange 2007. Backward compatability between the XP generation of Software & Vista/7 generation is a major headache in general. Even Office 2007 doesnt run as well as it should in XP


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## mantis484 (Feb 24, 2009)

*Re: Outlook 2003/Exchange 2007 - "Your Version of Outlook has been blocked..."*

Hi thanks for the additional kb. I am going to try and push this with the systems team and get them to take some ownership of it. I will post further comments when it's resolved. 

Thanks again.


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## mantis484 (Feb 24, 2009)

*Re: Outlook 2003/Exchange 2007 - "Your Version of Outlook has been blocked..."*

Hi we managed to find the solution so I'm posting it here to help others. 

We inherited a number of builds that were done by other companies. It appears these builds have in the past had previous versions of Office installed. This has resulted in registry keys lurking around from the old installs. 

Once we removed these registry entries it worked. 

Best way to do this that I could think of is to 

*1)* Uninstall Office and then search the registry for any references to Outlook. You can do this using AML Free Registry Cleaner http://www.amltools.com/ (which has a search function). Ignore any hits for Outlook Express you are only insterested in Office Outlook. 

*2)* If this is the problem that you are having then you will find registry entries in *HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\7.0 or 8.0 or 9.0 etc.*

*3) *Delete any Outlook folders in the above tree. Onc eof the keys in the Outlook folder will be Version and this appears to be what is being read when the server asks what version you have. 

*4)* Reinstall Office - it should now work. 

All the best, 

mantis484


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## asidman (Nov 28, 2008)

*Re: Outlook 2003/Exchange 2007 - "Your Version of Outlook has been blocked..."*

Hi mantis484, glad you got it sorted and thanks for the feedback.


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## nobox (Oct 26, 2009)

*Re: Outlook 2003/Exchange 2007 - "Your Version of Outlook has been blocked..."*

I had the same problem you need to add a public folder database for Outlook 2003 to work. 
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123687.aspx


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