Apps for Outlook 2013 do not activate as expected in email messages

Original KB number:   2790827

Symptoms

When you view an email message in Outlook 2013, you do not see any Apps for Outlook displayed even though the necessary text to start one or more apps is contained in the email message.

For example, you see the following screenshot when you view an email message that contains a street address.

Screenshot that is displayed when you view an email message.

Your expectation is that the Bing Maps app for Outlook is displayed, as in the following figure.

Screenshot of the email message with Bing Maps.

Cause

This symptom will occur if the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter of the OrganizationConfig object is set to $False.

Resolution

You can use the following cmdlet in Exchange Server 2013 to determine the current value of the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter.

Get-OrganizationConfig | FL AppsForOffice*

In the configuration where you do not see any Apps for Outlook in email messages, the result from this cmdlet will be the same as that shown in the following screenshot:

Screenshot of the result from this cmdlet.

If it is necessary, you can use the following cmdlet in Exchange Server 2013 to set the value of the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter to $True.

Set-OrganizationConfig -AppsForOfficeEnabled $True

If you make this change, you can force an update by recycling the MSExchangeServicesAppPool application pool in Internet Information Services (IIS) manager.

More information

The AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter value is stored in the msExchProvisioningFlags attribute in Active Directory, as shown in the following screenshot.

Screenshot for msExchProvisioningFlags value in AD.

AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter setting msExchProvisioningFlags attribute value
$True 0
$False 512 (decimal)

As the msExchProvisioningFlags attribute can contain several flag values for different parameters (not just the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter), you may have to do some math to determine the current value of the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter. Therefore, if the value of this attribute is greater than 512, you have to see whether the value is made up of several values, one of which includes 512.

For example:

msExchProvisioningFlags attribute value Contains Flags AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter Reason
640 512 & 128 $False because 512 is part of the attribute value, the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter is set to $False. This always adds 512 to the attribute value.
1280 1024 & 256 $True because 512 is Not part of the attribute value, the AppsForOfficeEnabled parameter is set to $True. This always adds 0 to the attribute value.