When Outlook is opened, it will not connect to the Exchange server. Instead, Outlook says “disconnected” in the lower right corner, and clicking “Send/Receive” shows error 0x8004011D in the Outlook Send/Receive window. One possible cause of this is if your Exchange/IIS server (both of mine are on the same machine) is using a self-signed SSL certificate.

Here’s the solution

Install the SSL certificate on the client computer. The easiest way to do this on one machine is to visit the Outlook Web Access (OWA) website with Internet Explorer and install the certificate. On a domain, it is possible to deploy the self-signed certificate with group policy, eliminating the need to visit the OWA site with IE.

Note: If you are on Windows Vista, you need to run Internet Explorer as Administrator in order to install the SSL certificate. Go to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer, right click iexplorer.exe and choose Run as Administrator. Now you can install the certificate.

This problem with self-signed certificates is related to Visual Studio will not deploy report to SQL Server Reporting Services because both are caused by not trusting the SSL certificate and issuing authority. Ideally, it would be best to purchase a commercial SSL certificate, but of course they cost money.