Thunderbird as client for Microsoft Exchange 2010 server

Looking for the instructions for Ubuntu 11.10? Click here.

Thanks to a link posted by tanstaalf to a French project, DavMail, I was finally able to connect to my company’s Microsoft Exchange 2010 server from my beloved Mozilla Thunderbird client. The solution lies in installing an Exchange gateway called DavMail. I run this on my localhost, but this can naturally be set up on any host.

I can verify connecting successfully to the following services: Email, Calendar and Directory.

Install DavMail on Ubuntu 11.04 (64bit)

Looking for the instructions for Ubuntu 11.10? Click here.

I run a pretty standard Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit OS (download here). If you have a different distro, or run a 32-bit version, you can still use this HOWTO, just adapt the parts that are 64-bit specific.

Install the prerequisites:

$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin libswt-gtk-3.6-java

Download and install DavMail:

$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/davmail/davmail/3.9.5/davmail_3.9.5-1805-1_all.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i davmail_3.9.5-1805-1_all.deb

DavMail should now be installed. Continue to the next section.

Configure DavMail

Now, start DavMail from the main menu:

Applications -> Internet -> DavMail

You should now see an icon in your system tray that looks like this:

Right click on the icon, choose settings and set the URL to your OWA (Exchange) server (e.g.https://webmail.mycompany.com/exchange/):

Save, and DavMail is ready to go. You can check out the logs by right clicking on the icon and selecting «Show logs».

DavMail is made to work for any email client. Here are the instructions for Thunderbird.

Ubuntu 11.04 (64bit): Thunderbird 3.1

Thunderbird is not part of the default installation in Ubuntu 11.04, so you need to install it manually:
$ sudo apt-get install thunderbird

Set up new email account

Open Thunderbird and configure your email servers like this:

Your Username must be in the following form: DOMAIN\USER

The email client will complaint that you are using an insecure connection to the server, but that’s allright, as it runs on localhost.

Configure an existing account

In Thunderbird, go to Edit -> Account Settings, and edit the Server settings, so they look like this:

Your Username must be in the following form: DOMAIN\USER

Also, edit the SMTP server settings, so they look like this:

Your Username must be in the following form: DOMAIN\USER

Set up calendar

Download lightning.xpi og gdata-provider.xpi, og install the extensions from file in Thunderbird (Tools -> Addons -> Install):

Now, restart Thunderbird, and open the Calendar.

Add a new calendar and use a URL like this: http://localhost:1080/users/<YOUR FULL EMAIL ADDRESS>/calendar :

Important note! If you leave the Email set to None, no invitations will be sent to other participants when you arrange meetings.

Set up Directory Service (Active Directory)

Open up the Address book in Thunderbird and add a new LDAP directory like this:

Note: The Bind DN must be in the following form: DOMAIN\USER

References

• http://davmail.sourceforge.net
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ThunderbirdLightning
• http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/thunderbird_owa_support