Mac Mail and Microsoft Exchange via IMap
by: George Starcher, Associate Editor
Today I had to help our Corporate office. They had a person in our graphics department that used Outlook on a 10.3.9 version Mac. They had moved this person’s email box to a new Exchange server and their mail quit working. Rather than fight with this old unsupported software I showed them how to setup the native Mac Mail and Address book to talk to the company Exchange system using IMap and Ldap.
This assumes your company Exchange server already is set to allow IMap and Ldap. Ours was for a voicemail unified messaging system.
The key here is to get the user name right. All the rest is as you would expect. Give the IP address of the Exchange server, choose Imap as your connection type.
The user name format is Domain/DomainUserName/ExchangeMailboxAlias
An example would be MyDomain/gstarcher/georgestarcher
Your password is your Microsoft network domain user password. Keep in mind most companies (if they are smart) make you change your network password regularly. So you will need to update it in your mail account settings if you choose to save the password every time it changes.
- Domain - This is your Microsoft Windows domain name
- DomainUserName - This is your network logon user ID
- ExchangeMaiboxAlias - This is the alias name setup in your Exchange Mailbox settings on the Exchange server. You may need to get this from your IT department.
Address Book
Open up address book. Open the program preferences and go to the Ldap tab. Click the Plus button to add a new Ldap server. Enter the appropriate settings provided by the IT department. Depending on how they have Ldap setup you may need to use SSL to encrypt it and a logon to authenticate (usually your domain user logon like in mail above) to be able to do lookups. However the default on Microsoft Exchange is wide open so usually just the IP address of the Exchange server will work. Big Surprise there I know.
That is it. As long as your Mac can reach the Exchange server then you can check your email and even send to other company employees via their names. Keep in mind if you are not setting up all this with SSL to encrypt it then I would not do this except for Macs that stay inside the company network and never leave.
