We have an odd problem where our German counterparts have problems when searching their mailboxes in OWA. They receive an error in German basically telling them that the search function is unavailable and to contact their administrator. We've found out that changing the regional settings in OWA to English cures the problem. If they switch back to German, they're unable to search again.I know we can set the default language to English by using a shell command, but they really want to see their emails in their native language and to be able to search.Exchange 2007, SP1. 2003 server R2, SP2.Any clues?Thanks,Michael.

Hi Michael,Could you please provide accurate error message while the users search in OWA?Is there any error events in the event viewer?Will this KB be helpful?http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945077/en-usFrank Wang

Hello Frank, When the person tries to search, a pop-up box appears stating: Problem beim Versuch, Ihr Postfach zu verwenden. Wenden Sie sich an den technischen Support für Ihre Organisation. I can re-create the same error if I change my regional settings to German (Germany). I don't see any event log error. The KB listed above would not help in our situation. If I do run that shell command, test-exchangesearch username |fl It returns: ResultFound : True SearchTime : 4 I did Google the error but cannot find any other person with the same problem. I did see one post that mentioned the ExchangeVersion cannot be less than 0.1. A shell command run on my mailbox has my ExchangeVersion at 0.1 <8.0.535.0> I'll try some other regional settings. Thanks, Michael.

Update: If I change the regional settings to German (Switzerland), the search function is fine. Maybe the German (Germany) language setting is a problem?

Another update: Ran the following command on one of the problem mailboxes: Set-Mailbox -identity 'mailbox identity' -languages 'language code'. I set the language code to 1031 and I was able to search the mailbox. However, I tried this on another problem mailbox and it returned the error code :-sWill check again tomorrow.

Hi Michael Keel, we have exact the same problem, did you come to a solution on this?

It looks like we have now resolved our problem. I logged on to OWA using the light version and received a more detailed error message which gave an exception error: Exception type: Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.StoragePermanentException Exception message: Cannot set search criteria in SearchFolder. I have just tried a search for the error: Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.StoragePermanentException and there are quite a few post about it but only in relation to people who cannot logon to OWA. This link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941146 mentions running the following shell script; Set-Mailbox User_Name –ApplyMandatoryProperties I tried this out of desperation more than anything else and the error seems to have gone away. I can set the language to German and it no longer reports an error. Very odd!

Hello, we have the same problem. Searching in OWA gives error message. If I change the language from german to english, it works. Set-Mailbox User_Name –ApplyMandatoryProperties does not help. I found out, that the problem is bind to a server. All mailboxes on a server have the problem. If I move the mailbox on or off the problematic server, the problem comes or goes. The last time, a reboot of the problematic server helped. But the problem came back and now on two servers. We don't want to have to reboot the server every now and then. Has anyone come up with a better solution?

Hi there, We still do not have a solution for this problem. –ApplyMandatoryProperties does not help as you mentioned. I thought it had solved the problem but it seems not. The only solution we have come up with, is to set the language to another German dialect (if that is the correct term). Germany (Liechenstein) seems to work okay. Michael.