I've got a brand new Exchange 2013 CU2 farm set up, 2 CAS servers and 2 mailbox servers in a DAG and I'm trying to add an Office Web Apps 2013 server into the mix. First, can someone give me a reason why we would want or need an Office Web Apps server, if all that's integrating with it is Exchange? From what I've read, it only offers Office document previews, but it appears to already have that functionality. Does it offer editing capability?

Second, I've followed all the guides I can find on integrating OWA (there has to be a better acronym for this) and Exchange, but I'm still getting errors when I try to preview an attachment.

For Word, it says "Sorry, there was a problem and we can't open this document." For Excel, it gives an ASP-style error that says "Server Error in '/x' Application" behind the words "Excel Web App" and a continuous progress bar. For Powerpoint, it says "Sorry, we couldn't open this presentation because we ran into a problem."

I've tried building a new OWA server, running 2012 R2 and all the updates, and the only commands I've run on the OWA server are "New-OfficeWebAppsFarm", giving the internal URL, the external URL, enabling editing, and giving the friendly name of the certificate (which is a valid cert). On the Exchange side, I've run "Set-OrganizationConfig -WACDiscoveryEndpoint 'https://fqdn-of-owa-server'" and "Set-OwaVirtualDirectory -WacViewingOnPublicComputersEnabled $true -WacViewingOnPrivateComputersEnabled $true -ForceWacViewingFirstOnPublicComputers $true -ForceWacViewingFirstOnPrivateComputers $true" for both CAS servers.

I've also tried it from different browsers, and added the OWA URL to the Trusted Sites in IE10 and IE11, but no dice.

Am I missing something? Even if I get the integration to work, what benefit does it give me?

Hi,

Office Web Apps Server Integration

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj150495(v=exchg.150).aspx

Recreated Office Web Apps farm and WOPI Bindings on SharePoint as follows:

===================

• Remove-OfficeWebAppsMachine 
• New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalUrl "xxxx" AllowHttp
• Set-OfficeWebAppsFarm -EditingEnabled:$true
• Get-OfficeWebAppsFarm
• Get-OfficeWebAppsHost -> allowList war empty
• New-OfficeWebAppsHost domain xxxx to add the domain in the allowList

Thanks,

If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnsfl@microsoft.com

Hi,

Is there any update on this thread?

Thanks,

If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnsfl@microsoft.com

Thanks for getting back to me!

I just went through all those steps, and re-enabled the Office Web Apps on the Exchange side, rebooted both CAS servers, rebooted the OWA server (just to be safe), and verified that the hosting/discovery URL shows the XML, as it should. After all that checked out, I logged back in with my test account, and I'm still getting the same errors on all 3 test documents.