[vividboy]

has anyone found a way to access an exchange server without having IMAP enabled?

thank you in advance for any information you can provide.

[vividboy]

as a secondary query, is there a way to just scrape the information out of Outlook Web Access into Mail.App instead of having to access it through a browser?

[cpac]

on the first issue no.

The only difference in Mail between an Exchange account and an IMAP account is that if you tell Mail the account is an Exchange account, it wont show mailboxes for your contacts/to do list/ etc.

I believe another thread on this topic mentioned that *no* third party mail clients can access exchange without IMAP turned on.

As for the second issue, no I don't think it's possible, unless you wrote a very large applescript, by which point it'd just be better to use the web portal anyway.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by vividboy:
has anyone found a way to access an exchange server without having IMAP enabled?

thank you in advance for any information you can provide.

An Exchange admin can enable POP access to Exchange, and then you can connect to it as a standard POP account from Mail.

But you cannot use the default MAPI protocol from a Mac. The Exchange admin must enable either IMAP or POP. If they insist they can't due to security reasons, go bitch slap them and their boss, as they're incompetent morons.

[Preciousss]

Originally posted by CatOne:
An Exchange admin can enable POP access to Exchange, and then you can connect to it as a standard POP account from Mail.

But you cannot use the default MAPI protocol from a Mac. The Exchange admin must enable either IMAP or POP. If they insist they can't due to security reasons, go bitch slap them and their boss, as they're incompetent morons.

*bump*

OK, here are the specs: TiBook, 1GHz, 10.3.5, Mail 1.3.9 in my new job where they're running Windows NT 4 and Exchange server.

I'm aware that Exchange server needs to be set up for IMAP access in order for Mail to work but our IT guy said exactly the same thing as you did: they can't do this (or set up POP access in Exchange server) for security reasons. I've never worked with Exchange before, and since I'm new here, I can't really go about bitch slapping folks.

Could you please elaborate why this is not a concern for them and how I might persuade/convince them that it wont' make them vulnerable? I've already showed them how cool OSX is with browsing their server (without Services For Macintosh enabled no less--still not sure how this is possible), and by connecting to their VPN with no problem.

Thanks!

[Moose]

Originally posted by Preciousss:
I'm aware that Exchange server needs to be set up for IMAP access in order for Mail to work but our IT guy said exactly the same thing as you did: they can't do this (or set up POP access in Exchange server) for security reasons. I've never worked with Exchange before, and since I'm new here, I can't really go about bitch slapping folks.

Could you please elaborate why this is not a concern for them and how I might persuade/convince them that it wont' make them vulnerable?

Exchange supports SSL-encrypted IMAP. If they don't know this, they need to go back to Exchange school.

[Preciousss]

Originally posted by Moose:
Exchange supports SSL-encrypted IMAP. If they don't know this, they need to go back to Exchange school.

OK, I just found out which version of Exchange we're using: 5.5 SP5. I've read elsewhere that anything under version 2000 is problematic. Is this support of SSL-encrypted IMAP a feature of later versions of Exchange, or is it also part of version 5.5?

Just an FYI: I also tried setting up my Mail.app account as IMAP to connect to the Exchange server (as someone else said this worked for them), but no good. I reall don't want to go back to Entourage...

[Maneki Neko]

Originally posted by Preciousss:
Just an FYI: I also tried setting up my Mail.app account as IMAP to connect to the Exchange server (as someone else said this worked for them), but no good. I reall don't want to go back to Entourage...

Doesn't matter, as Entourage 2004 won't work in Exchange mode with Exchange 5.5. (Dunno about earlier versions.) Sounds like you're out of luck unless they're willing to enable to extra protocols.

[Moose]

Originally posted by Preciousss:
OK, I just found out which version of Exchange we're using: 5.5 SP5. I've read elsewhere that anything under version 2000 is problematic. Is this support of SSL-encrypted IMAP a feature of later versions of Exchange, or is it also part of version 5.5?

Jesus's balls.

Jesus's goddamned balls.

I'd heard stories of people still running E5.5, but I'd never run across an actual case. I don't mean to second-guess network administrators (having been one myself--no longer, thankfully), but do they have a real reason? Microsoft's almost tripping over its cagchk trying to get people to migrate up to Windows/Exchange Server 2003. Most of their upgrade documentation covers NT4/E5.5->2003 upgrades. It's kinda like they ignore 2000->2003.

[Preciousss]

Originally posted by Maneki Neko:
Doesn't matter, as Entourage 2004 won't work in Exchange mode with Exchange 5.5. (Dunno about earlier versions.) Sounds like you're out of luck unless they're willing to enable to extra protocols.

I'm still running Entourage v.X and guess what? It works! The bad news is that I'm not willing to go back

The IT guy and I played around with it one day and it didn't work, then when I opened it the next day, and without doing anything different, it pulled all my mail in. In the preferences, there was one additional field that I couldn't find in Mail:

Domain - We entered our network domain here

And for Exchange server, we entered the IP address instead of mail.blahblah.org/exchange

There is no field for Incoming Mail Server like in Mail.app. But I checked the default ports in Entourage. For Receiving, it's 143. For sending , it's port 25 and the checkbox for SMTP Server requires authentication is checked.

I changed all the settings in Mail.app to mirror this and I still get the error message that the connection to server mail.blahblah.org timed out on port 143. I"ve tried entering my full email address for User Name and still no go.

[What I haven't tried yet is applying these changes on the IMAP version of this account in Mail.app that I created.]

I'll try this, and I'll see if I can convince them to allow IMAP access. Seems like this is the one obstacle with Mail.app that Entourage doesn't worry about.

Any other suggestions, please speak up!

[Preciousss]

Originally posted by Moose:
Jesus's balls.

Jesus's goddamned balls.

I'd heard stories of people still running E5.5, but I'd never run across an actual case. I don't mean to second-guess network administrators (having been one myself--no longer, thankfully), but do they have a real reason? Microsoft's almost tripping over its cagchk trying to get people to migrate up to Windows/Exchange Server 2003. Most of their upgrade documentation covers NT4/E5.5->2003 upgrades. It's kinda like they ignore 2000->2003.

I know I know. My last job was in a technology consulting organization, and I'm having to bite my tongue a lot since it's not my role here and there's a danger of me being perceived as the difficult one for this, and the fact that I'm trying to get a dirty Mac in their office. This is overstating it though.

I would say their only real reason is that they're like most other small social justice nonprofit organizations out there: severly overextended and under resourced. I'm not sure yet if there's a technology plan or even a budget item for this kind of stuff. And if I start leading them down this road in too strong a way, I could easily get pulled away from the things I'm *supposed* to be doing. People are already coming to me in the office to fix technology problems. <shrug>

Today will only be my 3rd day there, so I'm still gauging the lay of the land. Please see my post above for the sudden Entourage 'solution". I still want to use Mail.app though! Please help if you have any ideas.

Thanks again.