[Solved]Error: Sorry, there was a problem and we can’t open this document with Office Online on Exchange Outlook Web Apps

During the configuration and installation of Office Online Server (OOS), I have come across with one error due to some silly mistakes. Sharing my experience and solution, hoping that other might may not have to drill down again for the solution for such kind of mistake. After the installation and configuration of OOS for Exchange 2016, when I tried to open Word Document on my Outlook Web App; I received an error saying ‘Sorry, there was a problem and we can’t open this document. If this happens again, try opening the document in Microsoft Word.’

Issue:

Error prompt with ‘Sorry, there was a problem and we can’t open this document. If this happens again, try opening the document in Microsoft Word.’ While trying to open MS Word document on Outlook Web Apps attached email.

Debugging:

To Debug this issue, I went to the location where the Office Web Apps logs are stored, and try to check the logs. Below is the location, where you find the OWA logs.

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\OfficeWebApps\Data\Logs\ULS

On looking deep to the log, I can see my connection is getting terminated.

02/03/2017 15:10:46.39         w3wp.exe (0x2324)         0x1EE8        Excel Online         Excel Calculation Services         albd9        Medium         ExcelServerApp.TerminateOlapConnections: Number of queued MSOlap connections for termination 0        5a0c6a4f-6ead-0002-b43d-74b44d77c7ac

Yet I don’t have any solution on why the issue has been raised. So, to check the reachability of my WACDiscoveryEndpoint I browsed the link: https://ws2k16owa.pdhewaju.com.np/hosting/discovery . Sometimes this might be issue to hence, while checking I found it do have proper reachability. And the link is okay. So I can discard this error and this error can be result of any other.

On Further investigating, I found another error of Trust relationship…. Saying ‘Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS Secure Channel.’

02/03/2017 14:44:11.06         w3wp.exe (0x1E68)         0x2258        Office Online         WAC Hosting Interaction         adhr0        Medium         Wopi,CheckFile,WACSERVER HttpRequestAsyncException [url:https://ws2k16exg.pdhewaju.com.np:443/owa/c9501e5b-0b69-451a-ab11-dd0c53fca904%40pdhewaju.local/wopi/files/@/owaatt?owaatt=LVMtMS01LTIxLTIxOTg2ODY2ODgtMzYzNjk0MTYyMC04OTY0MDgwNTItMTEyMReb1d8STNQIAQEBAAA%3d&access_token=REDACTED_1141&access_token_ttl=0, e:Microsoft.Office.Web.Common.HttpRequestAsyncException: No Response in WebException —> System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel. —> System.Security.Authentication.AuthenticationException: The remote certificate is invalid according to the validation procedure. at System.Net.TlsStream.EndWrite(IAsyncResult asyncResult) at System.Net.ConnectStream.WriteHeadersCallback(IAsyncResult ar) …        4ae7d0f5-671f-4eb4-a19d-f60f55ee4470

Resolution:

So, on my investigation I found the issue is with SSL/TLS Secure Channel. And for my Outlook Web Apps (OWA) browser I didn’t have any certificate assumed that could be the issue for me not getting open Word Online on my Browser. Hence created a new private certificate on Exchange server with the FQDN on server name for now.

Then from the ECP Panel, I have assigned this newly created certificate to the IIS.

Now when I browsed the Outlook Web Apps with the FQDN of the server, I couldn’t see any error of certificate. And tried again to open the Word Document again… and concluded that certificate was culprit. None of my configuration has do to nothing with this error. So it’s like you need to check certificate every time.

Conclusion:

If you are facing such type of issue, assign Private or Public certificate to your Exchange server and distribute same certificate to the client on which you are going to open the attachment of Word on OWA. This is suppressing any error like this by Establishing trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.