Thunderbird Microsoft Exchange

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Thunderbird Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Exchange Email Login

Adding an Exchange account to Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a good mail client. For the price, it’s fantastic. It’s very easy to configure for most email accounts like Gmail, Hotmail, etc., but it’s not always so easy for Exchange accounts. (There are some addons that add some Exchange functionality to Thunderbird, but I’ll look at those in a future post.) Here’s a quick guide to setting up an Exchange account on Thunderbird:

Thunderbird Microsoft Exchange
  1. In Thunderbird, go to the Tools menu and select Account Settings.
  2. In the Account Settings window, click on the Account Actions button at the bottom left.
  3. Enter your name, email address, and password, then click Continue.
  4. Thunderbird will attempt to connect to your Exchange server, but will probably fail with the message “Thunderbird failed to find the settings for your email account.” Click on the Manual Config button.
  5. You will probably have to enter your server name, port number, and authentication settings. For most Exchange Servers you will use these settings:
    • Incoming: IMAP / Server hostname: server.domain.com / Port: 993 / SSL: SSL/TLS / Authentication: Autodetect
    • Outgoing: SMTP / Server hostname: server.domain.com / Port: 465 / SSL: SSL/TLS / Authentication: Autodetect
      If it doesn’t connect at first, try playing with the Port, SSL, and Authentication settings, clicking the Re-test button to try each new configuration.
  6. Once you have a successful test of your server settings, click on the Advanced Settings button.
  7. Configure your signature on the main tab for your account in the Account Settings window.
  8. Click on Composition & Addressing to change some of the archaic and impractical default settings:
    • Change “start my reply below the quote” to “start my reply above the quote“. If you leave the default, nobody will ever see your reply if the original email is more than a single, short paragraph. More importantly, every other email client in the world will be putting replies at the top of the email instead of the bottom. After a couple of back-and-forths, the conversation thread will be hopelessly confused unless you change this setting.
    • Change “place my signature below the quote (recommended)” to “place my signature below my reply (above the quote)”. See above. Why anyone at Mozilla thought this was a good idea is beyond me.

Without installing an addon, you won’t be able to get your Exchange calendar or contacts in Thunderbird. In future posts, I’ll go over how to add both of those, and even how to connect to your organization’s Global Address List.

Microsoft Exchange Server uses a proprietary remote procedure call (RPC) protocol called MAPI/RPC, which was designed to be used by Microsoft Outlook. Clients capable of using the proprietary features of Exchange Server include Evolution, Hiri and Microsoft Outlook. Thunderbird can access Exchange server via the Owl Plugin. MS Exchange mail server is popular with the entire business fraternity, the world over. One issue that small business owners tend to face is that, without MS Outlook program, the one and only option available is MS Exchange’s Webmail to overcome the issue Thunderbird Failed to.

Thunderbird Microsoft Exchange

  1. Microsoft Entourage is a discontinued e-mail client and personal information manager that was developed by Microsoft for Mac OS 8.5 and later. Microsoft first released Entourage in October 2000 as part of the Microsoft Office 2001 office suite; Office 98, the previous version of Microsoft Office for the classic Mac OS included Outlook Express 5.
  2. The issue is Exchange requires an Active Sync or EWS Exchange Web Services connection which ThunderBird doesn’t natively support. Solution – install the ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange and Exchange EWS Provider Add-Ons. ExQuilla connects email and contacts, Exchange EWS Provider connects the calendar.