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Fix OWA error “Outlook Web Access could not find your digital ID for encryption”

Mike Jackson | June 18th, 2015 | general

Whenever users tries to send encrypted mail in OWA an error message pops up to the screen as given below:

“Outlook Web Access could not find your digital ID for encryption. If your digital ID is on a smart card, insert the card in the card reader, and then try to send the message again. You may also try sending the message unencrypted.

If your digital ID is not trusted by the Exchange server, you cannot use it to encrypt messages. For more information, contact technical support for your organization.”

Main Cause of this Error

The Subject field or Subject Alternative Name Field of the users certificate should have the SMTP address and that address should be listed on the Account which you are using to login to Outlook Web App (OWA).

In Exchange Server 2007 or 2010 if the SMTP certificate that is issues to the SMTP address is not in the Active Directory account then OWA will not use this certificate to encrypt the message.

Possible Resolution

You should have a digital ID to resolve this issue.

In case if you are using the digital ID in S/MIME email but the SMTP address of your account does not match with the Exchange Server mailbox account then Administrator of the Exchange Server can allow to use the User certificate by enabling the registry value.

By doing that, users can choose the certificate and that certificate will be used to sign the outgoing messages in OWA.

Follow the following steps to enable this feature in OWA

Note: The steps mentioned below requires editing of the registry key. So pay attention while doing the same and do it at your own risk.

  • Open Registry setting, for that enter regedit in the Run and hit Enter.
  • Now Expend the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\MSExchangeOWA\SMIME
  • Select new by right clicking on the SMIME key and then click DWORD (32-bit)
  • In the value field of DWORD enter AllowUserChoiceOfSigningCertificate
  • Now Open AllowUserChoiceOfSigningCertificate and enter 1 in the value field.
  • After that close the registry window and open command prompt.
  • Run the command IISReset/noforce.

Users will found a new section in Email security after performing the steps mentioned above. By using this option users can manually pick the certificate.

Now Log in to OWA >> Options >> Email Security >> Select Certificate for Mail Signing >> Choose Manually pick the certificate >> choose certificate >> OK.

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Mike Jackson

Mike Jackson is a technical writer and he wrote numerous blogs or articles regarding Exchange Server corruption issues with their solutions. You can follow him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter. If you have any query & solution regarding Exchange Server & Outlook apps then you can mail Mike at mike.edbtopstpro@gmail.com.