Fixed the presence unknown issue in MS Outlook 2010 after the upgrade from MS Office Communicator 2007 to MS Lync 2013

This week, our IT department was doing the upgrade from Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 to Microsoft Lync 2013. After the upgrade, I noticed that the presence status in Microsoft Outlook 2010 showed “Unknown”.

After looking into this interesting issue, I noticed that upgrade means install because Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Office communicator appear in Programs and Features. But Office Communicator 2007 is turned off in Startup program.

How to fix the unknown status issue?

In Search dialog box, enter regedit.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers.

Click DefaultIMApp and it shows Communicator. Change it to Lync.

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers\Lync.

Add a new DWORD (32-bit) value and name is UpAndRunning. Set Value data = 2 (Hexadecimal).

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IM Providers\Communicator. In UpAndRunning, set Value data = 0 (Hexadecimal). (Note: this is optional if your office communicator is not launched automatically)

After rebooting the laptop, the presence status appears in MS Outlook 2010.