Connect the Thunderbird email client to your Exchange server

Looking for an Outlook replacement? If so, try using Thunderbird with the ExQuilla addon to get an email client connected with an Exchange 2007 or 2010 server. 

Microsoft Exchange is one of the most widely used email servers in the business world. The problem many smaller businesses have with this is that, without Outlook, the only option is Exchange Webmail. This option is fine for some businesses, but for the ones that want an actual email client, it's been a challenge. That all changes now.

The ability to connect the Thunderbird email client to an Exchange server is finally possible. Thanks to Zendesk's ExQuilla Thunderbird addon, you can connect Thunderbird to your Exchange 2007 or 2010 server through Exchange Web Services (EWS). The setup just requires the installation of an addon and some knowledge about your server.

I will walk you through the installation of the addon as well as the setup of your Exchange account. I assume you already have Thunderbird installed and running, you have an Exchange account, and your Exchange server is either 2007 or 2010 and uses EWS.

Installing the plugin

1. Open Thunderbird.
2. Go to Tools | Addons.
3. In the search field, type Exchange.
4. Click the ExQuilla addon.
5. Click Install.
6. Click Restart within Thunderbird.

The addon should be installed. All that is left is to configure a new EWS account within the addon.

If you install the addon through the Thunderbird Extension Manager, you will most likely wind up with an out of date version of ExQuilla that will not work. If this is the case, install it with these steps:

1. Download the latest version of ExQuilla for your platform (Windows, Linux, or Mac).
2. Open Thunderbird.
3. Go to Tools | Addons.
4. Click the Tools drop-down and select Install From File.
5. Navigate to where you saved the file and select it.
6. Click the Install button (Figure A).
7. After the install completes, restart Thunderbird by clicking Restart Now.

Figure A

After the countdown, you should be able to click Install. (Click the image to enlarge.)

Setting up the account

Before you set up the account in Thunderbird, you must find out your EWS address -- it will be something like https://YOUR_DOMAIN/EWS/Exchange.asmx. After you enter that into your browser, you should be prompted for your credentials. The credentials necessary should be in the form of DOMAIN\username and your Active Directory password. Once you successfully authenticate here, you can move on to setting up the account in Thunderbird.

1. Go to Tools | ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange and then select Add Microsoft Exchange Account.

2. In the first window of the wizard, enter your email address and password, leave Login With Email Address checked (Figure B), and click Next. Figure B

If the email authentication method fails, go back and use the Domain\Username method.

3. In the Exchange address setup dialog (Figure C), if your Exchange server is configured for auto discover, you should be able to click the Do Auto Discover button, and ExQuilla will locate the server address; if your Exchange server isn't set up for auto discover, you'll have to manually enter the address. Click the Manual button, enter the URL to the server in the Microsoft Exchange EWS URL field, and click Next. Figure C

Enter Your Name and keep the two check boxes at the bottom checked.

4. The window you will be presented lists the setup you just created. Click Finish, and the wizard will be complete. ExQuilla will begin to pull down your Exchange email into a newly created account. This new account should include all of your current emails, as well as your archives and subfolders in your Inbox folder hierarchy.

Conclusion

Although it's not a 100% feature-for-feature replacement, for anyone who can't afford Microsoft Office or just wants an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, using Thunderbird with the ExQuilla addon is a fantastic way to get an email client connected with an Exchange 2007 or 2010 server. You'll find Thunderbird works faster and more reliably than Outlook and is not as prone to the PST issues that can often haunt Outlook.

Troubleshoot Outlook connectivity with these quick tips

When Outlook won't connect to the Exchange server, follow these steps before calling IT for help. 

Microsoft Outlook is often rendered useless because it cannot connect to its Exchange server. Sometimes troubleshooting the issue is as simple as closing Outlook and restarting. In other instances, troubleshooting is much more challenging... or so it seems.

The following troubleshooting tips make solving that connectivity loss a snap. These instructions don't require a computer science degree to understand them, so just about anyone should be able to get Outlook re-connected to their Exchange server. We'll start with the simplest tip and increase the difficulty as we go along.

Uncheck offline mode

Oftentimes when a client calls and says, "My email won't work!" I find that Outlook was somehow set to offline mode. If you're using Outlook 2007 or earlier, click the File menu. If there is a check mark next to Work Offline, uncheck it, and you should be good to go.

If you're using Outlook 2010 or higher, follow these steps:

1. Click the Send/Receive tab.
2. Locate the Work Offline button.
3. Click the Offline button.

At the bottom of your Outlook window, you should see Trying To Connect.... If it connects, your problem is resolved; if not, move on to the next solution.

Restart

You should restart Outlook and, if that fails, restart your computer. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen Outlook connectivity issues resolve with a simple restart. The issue could be caused by the computer having connectivity issues. If you open your web browser and cannot reach a website or internal resources, that's most likely the problem. 

If Outlook still cannot connect and you cannot reach any websites or internal resources, contact your IT department because you have a networking issue. Once that is solved, Outlook will be fine.

Rebuild

Outlook can use two types of data files (.pst and .ost), and both are susceptible to errors that can cause connectivity problems. Here's how I handle this:

1. Close Outlook.
2. Open the Control Panel.
3. Locate the Mail icon (depending on how Windows Explorer is set up, you might have to click the Users section to find the Mail icon).
4. In the resulting window, click Data Files.
5. Select your data file from the list and click Open File Location (Figure A).
6. Locate the data file in question (it will probably have the same name as your email address).
7. If the file has the extension .ost, rename the extension to .OLD. If the file has the extension .pst, do nothing at this time.
8. Close these windows and open Outlook.

Figure A

This window will list all data files in use with Outlook.

Note: You need to be able to see file extensions in order to know if your data file is a .pst or .ost. This is handled through Windows Explorer settings.

If your data file is a .pst, follow these steps to run Scanpst on the file:

1. Search for scanpst.exe through Windows Explorer.
2. After you locate the file (e.g., a location could be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\), double click to run the application.
3. From the resulting window, click Browse (Figure B).
4. Locate your .pst file.
5. Click Start.

Figure B

If you've run Scanpst on your data file before, the location will already be in the field.

Scanpst will run eight passes over the data file; depending on the size of your data file, this can take quite awhile. If Scanpst finds errors in the data file, it will prompt you to click the Repair button. You should also check the box for Make Backup Of Scanned File Before Repairing in case something goes awry.

After the repair is complete, close Scanpst and re-open Outlook. If Outlook still cannot connect, move on to the next tip.

Repair install

You can run a repair installation of Microsoft Office; this will solve problems that standard fixes cannot repair. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Click Programs and Features.
3. Locate the entry for your Microsoft Office installation and select it.
4. Click Change.
5. Select Repair from the resulting window.
6. Click Continue.
7. Allow the repair to complete.
8. Reboot your computer.

After your computer has rebooted, start Outlook and hope for the best.

Recreate your profile

When all else fails, you can recreate your Outlook profile. I prefer to create a new profile (without deleting the old one) -- just in case. In order to recreate your profile, you need to know your account setting, so you should have that information before you begin. Here's how to create a new profile:

1. Open the Control Panel.
2. Open Mail.
3. Click Show Profiles.
4. Click Add (Figure C).
5. Give the profile a name.
6. Walk through the Outlook account setup wizard.
7. Once the profile is known to work, you'll either want to set that profile up as the default or delete the old profile.

Figure C

The Outlook profile manager.

If after all of these steps Outlook is still unable to connect, it's time to call the IT department. It could be a DNS issue, an Exchange issue, or a number of other possibilities that are outside the scope of this article.

How to install Microsoft Office 2010 on Linux with Wineu

I installed MS Office Professional 2010 on my Ubuntu computers and it's working fluently.

It is a nerve breaking experience for a Linux new bee to work with open-office for documentation works than their favorite MS Office. New interface and new formats of open office makes them reluctant to take it as a first choice. So this post is for those who are tired of rebooting your system to make small changes in the documentations.

Now you don’t want to reboot your system to get windows™ and MS Office™ to work on your documents. You can do it from any Linux distribution with wine.

1. Install Wine 1.3.35 beta through PPA.

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Code:

sudo apt-get update

Code:

sudo apt-get install wine1.3

2. Now start a new wine prefix or rename the hidden folder .wine in your Home directory (if you had Wine installed before).

From winetricks,

Choose "Select the default wineprefix" then "Install a windows DLL or component" and from there install the dotnet20 and msxml6, following the instructions.
Again from "Select the default wineprefix" choose "install a font" and select the corefonts.

From winetricks and "Select the default wineprefix" choose run "winecfg". From there go to tab "Libraries" and click on *msxml6 then "Edit" and choose "Native (windows)".

3. Run the MS Office 2010 Professional x86 installer you have.
I used an .exe file. On Wine website they used an .iso mounted (MS Office Pro Plus x86 2010). Choose to install only Word, Excell and Powerpoint.
I used a valid key and the online activation worked perfectly.

During the installation the installer was hang for a while but finally it completed the installation.

4. On winecfg as instructed above to the tab "Libraries" and from "new override for library" click the small arrow and choose to "Add" riched20 and gdiplus. Then click on both, "Edit" and as above change their override to "Native (windows)".

5. Final steps.
Open Word, Excell and Powerpoint to see if they work. Then go to each one to File-options-Trust Center->Trust Center Settings, lower the security to none in every option and uncheck the Enable Protected View options. Word and Excell are working perfectly, the only problem is with Powerpoint which is not very dependable.

Screenshots :

Repair Outlook PST File - Quick HOWTO

We need to Run the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe)  to repair the outlook PST file.

1. Go to  "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12"
2. Double click the scanpst.exe file to open the program.
3. Type the path and file name of the PST file, or Click Browse to locate the file.
4. Click on the option which says Repair. (Ensure that backup check box is checked)
5. This might take sometime depending on the size of the Outlook PST file.

You are done. This will repair most of the errors in PST file. Enjoy..!

Use Outlook Anywhere to connect to your Exchange server without VPN

This feature requires you to use a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange Server 2007 account. Most home and personal accounts do not use Microsoft Exchange. For more information about Microsoft Exchange accounts and how to determine which version of Exchange your account connects to, see the links in the See Also section.
In a local area network (LAN) (LAN: A computer network technology designed to connect computers separated by a short distance. A local area network (LAN) can be connected to the Internet and can also be configured as an intranet.) environment, Microsoft Outlook communicates with Exchange by using remote procedure call (RPC) (remote procedure call (RPC): In programming, a request by one program to a second program on a remote system. The second program generally performs a task and returns the results of that task to the first program.) with Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). This method provides quick and efficient access in a corporate network. However, access to Exchange when you are outside of your organization's firewall, such as when you are at home or traveling, usually requires a virtual private network (VPN) (virtual private network (VPN): Extension of a private network encompassing encapsulated, encrypted, and authenticated links across shared or public networks. VPN connections provide remote access and connections to private networks over the Internet.) connection to the organization's network. A VPN provides you with a connection within an organization's network and within its firewall. A VPN also enables access to more network services than those required for just e-mail access.

For remote connections, Outlook offers Outlook Anywhere, an alternative to VPN connections that allows you to use Outlook just as you normally do at your organization, without the need for any special connections or hardware, such as smart cards and security tokens. Outlook can connect to Exchange through the Internet by using remote procedure call (RPC) over HTTP. The Outlook Anywhere feature allows you to access your Exchange account remotely from the Internet when you are working outside your organization's firewall.

System requirements

There are several minimum requirements for using Outlook Anywhere. If your computer and Exchange do not meet all requirements for this feature, these options will not be available. The requirements include:

• Your computer must have Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 or a later service pack.
• Your account be hosted on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 running on Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
• Your Exchange administrator must configure the server to permit connections via HTTP. For more information about configuring this feature, see the Microsoft Office Resource Kit and the Microsoft Exchange documentation.

Enable Outlook Anywhere in Outlook

Your Exchange administrator can automatically configure all copies of Outlook in your organization or provide a special executable script file that enables Outlook Anywhere. You can also manually configure Outlook Anywhere if the system requirements are met and you have the correct URL and security information from your Exchange administrator.

1. On the Tools menu, click Account Settings, select the Exchange account, and then click Change.
2. Click More Settings, and then click the Connection tab.
3. Under Outlook Anywhere, select the Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP check box.

 Note   If the Outlook Anywhere section is not available, your computer is probably not running Windows XP Service Pack 2 or a later service pack.

4. To specify a proxy server, click Exchange Proxy Settings.

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 Type the URL provided by your Exchange administrator.

 If your Exchange administrator tells you to use a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection, select the Connect using SSL only check box.

 If your Exchange administrator instructs you to do so, select the Only connect to proxy servers that have this principal name in their certificate check box, and then type msstd: followed by the URL provided by the administrator.

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5. Under Proxy authentication settings, click Basic Authentication or NTLM Authentication as instructed by your Exchange administrator.

 Note   If you click Basic Authentication or NTLM Authentication and an LM Compatibility Level of less than 2, you will be prompted for a password each time a connection is made to Exchange. With Basic Authentication, the password is sent in clear text. For increased security, we recommend that you select the NTLM Authentication and Connect using SSL only options.