USyd ICT 0, Thunderbird 1
The woe when Sydney University central IT decided to migrate everyone to the Microsoft Exchange server! Migrate is too kind a word - it was more of an uprooting. As Angela put it, it was a case of outright computer molestation!
We like using Thunderbird for email. It’s open source, free, and flexible. But unfortunately, Thunderbird only manages to talk to email servers using POP or IMAP, and not Exchange. ICT said that we had to use Outlook. HAD TO. The line was basically, “Tough luck, everyone’s migrating, you have to do it as well”. Read: “We love Microsoft and have no idea how to work with other software. The university has decided to install buggy proprietary software so that the vice-chancellor can read your email and share your calendar and personal contacts so bananas to you”. So kicking and screaming, my email was migrated from the good ol’ POP3 system to the dreaded Exchange. I fought it as long as I could, even ignored the emails reminding us to contact the IT team responsible for migration.
But last Friday they came.
And after my email bounced for a few hours while the ‘migration’ happened, I was on the new system. Another case of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I must say the Outlook web interface was half decent compared to the mediocre horde interface, although it rendered much better in Internet Explorer (bleh, Microsoft) than in Firefox. But the issue was how to get mail onto my computer to read offline, amongst other concerns?
To cut a very long story short, I spent 5 hours this morning trying to make Exchange work with Thunderbird, so that it was as if I was back to the old system of email. I hope the instructions posted here will help others in similar positions. For Thunderbird to be able to read Exchange emails using this method, your Exchange administrator must have Web Access enabled and you need to be able to access it. For me, thankfully this was enabled as POP and IMAP for Exchange were both disabled by the very kind admins.
First, you need to download and install the WebMail extension for Thunderbird. Restart Thunderbird, and install the helper extension OWA Webmail, which stands for Outlook Web Access. Basically this method hinges on an extremely useful Thunderbird extension that logs in to Web Access for you and downloads mail from there. After the two extensions are installed, restart Thunderbird again.
Before continuing, you need a few pieces of information: (1) the username that you use to log into Web Access (e.g. jsmith1234), (2) your password (e.g. outlooksucks), (3) your complete email address (not aliases!) (e.g. jsmith1234@mail.company.com) and (4) the URI of the Web Access interface (e.g. http://www.mcws.company.com/exchange).
Start Thunderbird and create a New Account (Tools -> Account Settings -> Add Account). The account type is Web mail, and the Incoming User Name is jsmith1234@mail.company.com, for example. Hit Finish when done.
Then get to the settings for the WebMail extension. Go to Tools -> Add-ons, and click the Options button for the WebMail extension. Make sure the POP server is running (green light showing). Close this dialog, then go to the Options for the WebMail - OWA extension. Access the Domains tab, and click Add. For Domain, enter the part of your email address after the @, e.g. mail.company.com in John Smith’s case. For Uri, enter the URI of the Outlook Web Access interface (e.g. http://www.mcws.company.com/exchange). Click Ok, and select the Accounts tab, and you should be able to see the Web Mail account you created in a drop-down box. You need to fiddle with these settings depending on your Exchange set-up. The Screen Ripper option works for me, as does unchecking Use domain in login request.
Oh, and another thing. Windows Vista doesn’t seem to recognise the alias ‘localhost’. This means that in Account Settings, in the Server Settings for your newly created account, you need to use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost as the Server Name.
After all this is set up, try getting your mail. If all is working, your password should be requested, and your mail should start being downloaded. It was an immense relief that 5 hours of ‘work’ finally paid off.
If this method doesn’t work for you, you may be interested in other methods to access Outlook Web Access. These other methods are, in my opinion, a bit convoluted, besides the fact that they didn’t work for me on Exchange Server 2007.