Aaron Adams’s Lame-ass Blog

This week I started using Microsoft Entourage to connect to the Exchange server of a company I work for. After running the setup assistant and filling in what should have been the correct values, I received this error message after attempting to verify my account settings:

Verification Failed: “The end of file was reached.” (-39)

My account couldn’t be verified, and I couldn’t retrieve my e-mail. This one was a real dome scratcher, but after I figured it out, I was forced once again to ask the (probably pointless) question: Do developers bother to actually use their software before they ship it?

Entourage doesn’t make this obvious, but it connects to an Exchange server not through the same means as Outlook, but rather via mounting the Exchange-provided web interface as a WebDAV volume. When the setup assistant or the account properties box in Entourage asks you for the address of the Exchange server, it’s asking you for the web-accessible address. At the company in question, the internal DNS name of the server is not set to respond to HTTP requests since it’s assumed that anyone inside the firewall will use the Outlook client instead of a web browser to retrieve mail. Entering the external, web-accessible address into the “Exchange server” text box under the “Account Settings” tab fixed everything. Also, if your Exchange website uses SSL, don’t forget to go to the “Advanced” tab and check “DAV service requires secure connection (SSL)”.

The account properties box does say that you’re able to enter the web address of the Exchange server in lieu of something like the internal DNS name, but that blurb is inaccurate and unhelpful. It should say that an address that resolves to the Exchange website is required, not an afterthought.

As usual, the Microsoft support site didn’t have anything to say about the error message, and Google came up with one thing that was not at all useful. According to that site, error -39 meant something was wrong with Entourage’s database or preferences and they needed to be rebuilt. Obviously, that wasn’t my case.

So developers, I present you with these questions and points: What does that error message have to do with not being able to access the Exchange-provided website? Not a thing as far as I can tell. Why is the error message so obscure? The end of what file has been reached? Telling me what file sure would be helpful. Why does Entourage’s inability to reach a website mean that the end of some file has been reached? Can you not provide a more relevant and helpful error message? Why does the MSKB have nothing to respond with when I enter the exact text of the error message? Shouldn’t all of the cryptic error codes in every product be thoroughly documented if you’re going to present them to users? Can you not provide more accurate information for filling in the Exchange server field? Why am I, the user, left to ask all of these questions? Did these issues not come up in testing? Have you ever used your own software before releasing it to your customers?