Azure Hybrid & Cloud Migration Blog

Recently I got a request to add list of e-mail domains as an Outlook Safe Sender list in all the users Microsoft Outlook 2010. For which we selected the Outlook 2010 Group Policy ADM template and Junk E-Mail filter separate ADM template, we combined both and set the group policy to import the exported Outlook Safe Sender domain list from a share on File Server with Everyone read-access.

We set the all GPO settings as per described in the Microsoft KB, and after applying the GPO we started seeing that the Outlook Safe Sender list has successfully imported on all the users Outlook. But soon we started hearing from the users on the fast link and slow WAN link that, whenever user is opening Outlook it gets hang, and mostly when it comes to browse the Outlook Address Book then especially the Outlook fails and request to user to re-authenticate and also fails often (Retrieving data from Microsoft Exchange Server).

The first thing, I thought I could be placing the importing list on the File Server, and we thought to copy the file to all the users local hard disk, and then change the GPO path to Outlook will be taking it from the local PC, but later we found that users are still facing the problem.

As a last resort, after going back to the Group Policy for the same GPO for Outlook Safe Sender list, and we set the GPO settings to NOT CONFIGURED, and refreshed the GPO on users, then only we saw that users are not facing this problem anymore.

So what could be the real cause, well I also checked the Microsoft TechNet fourms, and found that after adding Safe Sender List especially with GPO, people faced problems, which in the same way works fine with the Outlook 2010 / 2013.

I will make some more research on the same, and will later update the same blog post.

But till that time, I wanted you to be problem free when you apply the same workaround for your Outlook Safe Sender List.

Cheers