Need email client that supports Exchange on a Mac

DHS Odium

Okay, so I just got a new 24" iMac at work. I'm setting it up now, and installing software, all that good stuff. I also have a Dell laptop, they told me to use this in addition to the mac for email purposes, mainly. Outlook has exchange support, which is what my company uses. Myself, along with another fellow employee with the same setup, want to just use the iMacs, and not have to deal with the laptops (they are slow and terrible).

We were given Office: Mac 2008, unfortunately it's the Home and Student edition, so they lack Exchange support. I understand Mail has support, but I couldn't get it working, and upon further investigation it's not true support (is it?).

So is there a free email client that can use an exchange server? The only info I have is the actual exchange server, my username, and password. I don't know what version of exchange is being used, or incoming/outgoing server (Mail asked for this, the way Outlook is set up on the Dell, it just says "Microsoft Exchange Server: blah.blah.com").

Any help is much appreciated.

FF

Unless the Exchange server is set up to allow IMAP (i.e. third part clients), you're probably boned. There is the possibility that they have Outlook Web Access enabled, however the Outlook Web Access is terribad. Unfortunately, unless you can get someone from the IT department to help you out with more information about the server.

When you try and set up Entourage does the automatic detection of settings fail? I haven't seen it work once, in this version. I might be able to help you out if you could get me some screen shots. I believe the copy of Office I have is Home & Student and it connects to our Exchange server just fine. (I think the advanced Exchange support is some fancier calendaring stuff and/or market speak.)

Unicron

Well this all kind of depends. Expert-level = Intermediate. I work for a Hosting provider that does Exchange.

So is this an internal Exchange or is it a load of uncooperative bastards like us? Solutions are the same but getting there can be easier/harder.

First of all, for a free client: Well you've got mail.app which doesn't do Exchange but does do IMAP. This means you lose calendaring etc so may or may not be an option for you. Of course it can POP as well but let's try and stay semi-serious here. Also, IMAP may or may not be switched on, this is where the location of the server's admins becomes interesting

That's pretty much it for free as far as I know, though if you can get Evolution on Mac that has an Exchange plugin, but that needs Outlook Web Access enabled and doesn't work on Exchange 2007 (2000/2003 only)

If you can afford to splash out a bit, Entourage is pretty sweet but carries caveats. If you have a remote Exchange server and don't use VPN's, chances are you're using RPC over HTTPS, this is bad as Entourage doesn't really like it, again you'll lose calendaring. Slightly better than IMAP.

If you can afford a bit more and the options above don't work for you, get Parallels and run Outlook 2003/2007 in Fusion mode or whatever it's called, sadly enough that's one of the easiest options out there.

Any more questions or clarification of my answer, fire away!

wunderbar

entourage is the closest you are going to get on a mac. exchange is pretty much limited to outlook on windows, or entourage on the mac.

Check to see if they have outlook web access enabled. That could allow you to access echange via a web browser.

Alternatively, you could install windows in parallels or vmware fusion, and install office/outlook and run it that way.

Or you could listen to your company and do as they tell you, which is likely just as much for security/reliability/support reasons than it is anything else.

DHS Odium

I do have access to Outlook Web Access, it's a possibility for me, but obviously I prefer an actual client. For the question about Entourage automatic detection, it did not work at all.

I do not know if IMAP is enabled or not. I do need the calendar function to work and sync with the exchange server.

I doubt I can get a better version of Office:Mac. They went with the cheap option for the standard programs, even though I already have them all on the laptop. They aren't forcing me to use the laptop for email or security reasons, it's more because, well, I already have this, and have been using it, and it's all already set up. I spoke to a network guy here, and he wasn't sure how to set it up. I might try someone else.

I initially thought about parallels, the problem is needing a license for XP or Vista, which costs extra. Again, why would they do this if I already have a laptop set up for everything. This is more of a convenience, and maybe if they see I have everything working on just the mac, some other people will follow suit and they can do something better with these laptops.

I checked online, and there was no mention of any Exchange support in Entourage Home/Student. FF, how did you get this semi-working? The only options are IMAP and POP, no Exchange in the dropdown.

FF

Ah, well shit. I may have been mistaken as to what version of Office we had. (I was told it was the Student version, but...well, they lie to me sometimes) When I click on the button to make a new account I get the Account Setup Assistant which has a checkbox for "My account is on an Exchange server" If I config manually the Account type dropdown has POP, IMAP, Exchange and Windows Live Hotmail (ick).

You could, depending on the version of Windows you have, enable Remote Desktop on the Windows side and use Microsofts Remote Desktop Connection to view/use Outlook from the laptop on your Mac. It'd probably be pretty shitty, speed wise, but at least you'd be working on one machine instead of switching back and forth.

More than likely IMAP is not enabled server side as I believe there would be different settings for you to conect (which the admin should know) but if he doesn't know what the settings would be, he probably doesn't have IMAP turned on.

DHS Odium

I could do remote desktop, but it wouldn't solve my problem. I'd still have to have the laptop here, and that, an extra monitor, and a 24" iMac is taking up a lot of space on this desk.

One primary reason I want it all on one computer, is because on the mac I have Adobe CS4, which I use extensively as a graphic designer. I also email a lot of assets to a lot of people. Having to create something, then transfer over, and then attach is problematic. I also get images sent to me that I need to edit, so then I'll need to transfer to the mac, edit, transfer back to laptop, and then email. Ugh.

DHS Odium

One more thing, I'm fine with the outlook web client. I was using it alot when I was working remotely. Problem is, I haven't gotten it to display right with any browser other than IE. I'm downloading more browsers now to try. Safari won't show anything. Opera shows it with a thin panel and a horizontal scrollbar, despite the rest of the browser being much wider and empty white space - it's unusable like this. I though Opera had an IE display mode, but I guess they took this out.

FF

DHS Odium wrote: »

I could do remote desktop, but it wouldn't solve my problem. I'd still have to have the laptop here, and that, an extra monitor, and a 24" iMac is taking up a lot of space on this desk.

One primary reason I want it all on one computer, is because on the mac I have Adobe CS4, which I use extensively as a graphic designer. I also email a lot of assets to a lot of people. Having to create something, then transfer over, and then attach is problematic. I also get images sent to me that I need to edit, so then I'll need to transfer to the mac, edit, transfer back to laptop, and then email. Ugh.

Honestly, I'd make that argument to your superior. You have very legitimate reasons for needing a proper email client on your work machine and having to use a separate machine just for email will slow you down and impact your performance at work.

As for the Outlook Web client not working on anything other than IE. Something is wrong there, possibly the version of the web client is older, or a different version than I know of. We haven't had any problems with the web client on Safari or Firefox. Our version is the version provided by Exchange Server 2003.

wunderbar

FF wrote: »

DHS Odium wrote: »

I could do remote desktop, but it wouldn't solve my problem. I'd still have to have the laptop here, and that, an extra monitor, and a 24" iMac is taking up a lot of space on this desk.

One primary reason I want it all on one computer, is because on the mac I have Adobe CS4, which I use extensively as a graphic designer. I also email a lot of assets to a lot of people. Having to create something, then transfer over, and then attach is problematic. I also get images sent to me that I need to edit, so then I'll need to transfer to the mac, edit, transfer back to laptop, and then email. Ugh.

Honestly, I'd make that argument to your superior. You have very legitimate reasons for needing a proper email client on your work machine and having to use a separate machine just for email will slow you down and impact your performance at work.

As for the Outlook Web client not working on anything other than IE. Something is wrong there, possibly the version of the web client is older, or a different version than I know of. We haven't had any problems with the web client on Safari or Firefox. Our version is the version provided by Exchange Server 2003.

To get technical, you get support for OWA in other browsers, but you only get 100% of the functionality, especially if you have exchange 2007, if you are using IE.

FF

Ouch. I guess I should be glad our IT department is still using 2003. Though, I fear the only reason they haven't upgraded is that the current server is held together by dreams and unicorn farts.

wunderbar

FF wrote: »

Ouch. I guess I should be glad our IT department is still using 2003. Though, I fear the only reason they haven't upgraded is that the current server is held together by dreams and unicorn farts.

well, using FF or whatever with 2007 gets you similar experiences to 2003, but if you're using IE, it's pretty much like having outlook in your web browser.

DHS Odium

Okay, so I need the laptop for other services besides email. Well, I don't, but others do. And at some point in the future I might need to use special company programs. I'm told by my supervisor that parallels/fusion doesn't work well enough with whatever we might need Windows for, so that can't be our only solution. The laptop must stay.

However, that's not going to stop me from stuffing this thing in a drawer until I need it and whatever I need to do can be done on nothing else (never). I'm going to use VirtualBox on the iMac, and run Windows that way, with Outlook (or OWA) for my email purposes. Not sure how well transers are between virtual machines, but I'll find out soon enough.

We don't have a volume license for XP that I can use, so I'm going to use the Windows 7 Beta for now, just to see if this is a usable solution. I got the go ahead from IT to do whatever I want, they don't really care about the macs and they know that I know what I'm doing.

So thanks for the replies, I learned a little bit about Exchange. Before I even thought of using Entourage, I assumed you could just use something Apple built in, as I remember they did that with the iPhone, and several of my coworkers have email access on their iPhones. Guess not yet.

FF

Well, we do have people here able to get their email on their iPhones, however it's pretty flaky, something to do with the Exchange server allowing Blackberry's also lets iPhones get in. No dice for Apple's Mail however. Guess they're using different protocols to get email.