Access to MS Exchange from Ubuntu

Question

Recently, my organization offered us to connect to our MS Exchange account from Android. Since I am using Win XP with VB only to be able to access this account, I thought I could now easily access it straight with Ubuntu.

I first tried the ExQuilla plugin for Thunderbird, then Evolution with evolution-mapi packages (you have to also install python-samba to have the Mapi connection available), but without success. With Evolution, it tells me that the password was incorrect (which is not true).

The parameters I entered were:

• my full name and email address (user@myorg.org)
• selection of the server type: Exchange MAPI
• server (as given by the IT), without "https://"
• user name "user" and domain name (as given by the IT)
• checked secure connection

I then click on Authenticate. It asks me for the password and later rejects it...

Don't tell me to ask the IT, they expressly said they would not offer support for this, as there may be too many different way to access the server by our own device...

Thanks for any useful though that might cross your mind! Pierre

Answer 1

Firstly, try running Evolution from a terminal - you can look at what it logs to STDERR and STDOUT for clues about what might be going wrong.

With that out of the way: integrating with Exchange has always been one of my bug bears about switching to Linux full time and remains so. Neither of the two approaches for Evolution are satisfactory, in my opinion - both libmapi and the ews library have bugs and flaws that make them frustrating to use in the long run.

Assuming your IT department don't have POP3 or IMAP enabled on the server, your best bet might be to try Outlook Web Access - older versions were pants on non-IE browsers but more recent versions are surprisingly robust.

Probably not the answer you're looking for though :-D