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Comment by wallacoloo | Hacker News Reader

Is the new Thunderbird compatible with Microsoft's Exchange email service? If memory serves, I think that was what forced me to switch to the Evolution Mail client (which uses "Exchange Web Services") since my workplace uses Exchange.

With regard to the Photon UI, I'm weary of the calendar button being in the application header like that. It's just not where I would look for it, and I don't see what's different between it and the other buttons that would merit some of them being in the header and some of them not.

Either way, I'm happy that Thunderbird isn't dead. Even version 52 has some nice features that I couldn't find in other clients.

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>Is the new Thunderbird compatible with Microsoft's Exchange email service? If memory serves, I think that was what forced me to switch to the Evolution Mail client

I see this very much as a Microsoft problem rather than a Thunderbird problem, although I appreciate that doesn't make your situation better.

I use davmail[1] to solve this problem at work. Davmail sits in your tray, connects to exchange and turns the exchange traffic into standards-compliant mail traffic for your email client.

Of course, you lose some features in the process. About once a month I have to remind HR that the "vote" buttons in exchange are not part of any email client except outlook. Still, it works well for sending/receiving mail and tolerably for handling calendar invites.

[1] http://davmail.sourceforge.net/

>>I see this very much as a Microsoft problem rather than a Thunderbird problem,

In a away yes, but is also a Standards Problem. the Email Standards are shit and have needed to be updated for atleast 2 decades now but no one can agree on what should replace them.

For all of Microsoft failings, EWS and even ActiveSync is superior for syncing a users Mailbox, Calendar and other communication data between a central mail server and many clients...

Can you see the calendar availability of everyone who you invite as Outlook shows?

I have no idea, I mostly use the calendar for receiving invites to meetings. Try it and let me know?

The exchange integration ( we use outlook 365 ) for mail works fine, just set it up as IMAP.

The calendar stuff is a bit rockier, but there is project to keep it alive here: https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/

I hope that someone will add native Exchange and calendar.

Many organizations do not enable IMAP on Exchange (I know at least one that disabled it). So supporting the native Exchange API would be a big win.

For many people "lack of calendar" means "can't use it".

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/exquilla-...

seems to be a solution but not free ($10/year/user) and some reviews say that the extension is broken recently.

I'm using it and can recommend. It works for me. Maybe it's broken for some configurations?

I've had good success with using davmail[1] with the exchange server at work. It's still hosted on sourceforge, but some extended/community repositories have it as well (like Arch's AUR). It's Java, so relatively portable and easy to get working.

It even works with the calendar!

[1] http://davmail.sourceforge.net

Been using davmail for almost two years, and it works flawlessly. I could finally ditch Outlook at my workplace

+1 for davmail

This is my story as well. It's especially the case in a corporate environment when you're the love Linux insurgent holding ground in a sea of Macs and Windows

Just adding my voice to the cacophony of enterprise users, hoping Mozilla takes note.

I'd love to be able to ditch Evolution for Thunderbird but without Exchange it won't happen. I can manage without built-in calendar since Gnome calendar works well and I have my tablet too.

You can do EWS very well through a plugin called ExQuilla. You have to pay some small fee for a license, but you can try it for free. Otherwise, you can go through DavMail, but it's more of a hassle.

I recently paid for Hiri[1], which very smoothly connected with my corporate Exchange server. I haven't used it extensively yet, but the interface is interesting and they seem to be trying to do something different with email.

[1] https://www.hiri.com

This is neat. Gonna try this out now, thanks for the heads up.

Sounds great. The problem, when I play the video on their website and I close it while it's still playing, I continue to hear the video's sound.

Exchange supports IMAP and has done for decades. I remember being interviewed by the developer working on IMAP support at the time, in 1996.

The issue is if you are not the exchange admin. In most IT departments the default answer to everything, including "please turn on IMAP" is No.

So true. If you happen to be a power user, your life can be miserably limited by standardized configurations.

Unfortunately, this means you can use email, but not the calendar.

(In a slight twist of dramatic irony, we have had the same problem with Outlook 2016 trying to talk to an Exchange 2007 server... ;-) Upgrading the server is on our TODO list for 2018, but for the moment, we have to live with it.)

That's my only constraint as well, and last time I checked ews wasn't supported

Not natively, but you can sync exchange email through IMAP which works fine. Contacts and calendaring come through addons that do work with OWA.

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