How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

cfr · 2015-06-04 15:02:51

My institution has just informed me that they are switching off IMAP and POP access from Monday. Email and calendaring are provided by Office 365. Alternative configuration instructions are available for mobile devices (iOS, Blackberry, Android etc.) but not for Thunderbird. Their only suggestion is a paid plugin which my school would have to pay for. This just ain't gonna happen. Moreover, I would prefer a free software option if at all possible. ('Free' as in 'freedom', though beer is important, too.)

Calendaring isn't important as I have that setup independently of my organisation's provision. Only email matters.

Searching rather urgently has turned up a few leads but they are generally quite old and almost all require IMAP and/or POP enabled on the server. Beyond that, I've come across the following possibilities:

davmail which apparently bridges between OWA and IMAP/POP, but I'm not clear if this would work with Office 365 as I've only found references to using it with older MS Exchange servers;
evolution with a plugin;
possibly KDE's mail programme, although I'm not clear from the information I've found whether this is really an option or not.

I'm running KDE. If possible, I'd prefer to avoid the Gnome dependencies of evolution. However, if that's the only option, so be it. An ideal solution will work on Fedora as well as Arch. (Obviously Fedora is off-topic here - I just thought I might as well mention it.) A really ideal solution would also let me continue using Thunderbird without relying on proprietary code, but I'm beginning to think this is probably a pipe dream.

The most attractive of the above options is currently davmail, if that is really an option. However, I get the impression that this could require considerable overhead.

I would greatly appreciate any advice or pointers anybody can offer me. So far, I've not found anything which even mentions Linux with Office 365. I'm not sure if this is because 'Office 365' is actually relying on something else (and that's what I need to search for), whether it is because the situation is hopeless or whether it is for some other reason.

Trilby · 2015-06-04 15:09:05

My new institution uses only outlook OWA. You *must* run outlook (and it must be in windows) or you can only use the web interface. I've contacted IT about it, and apparently they don't care at all about mac/linux/android/iphone users and have refused to activate IMAP. (GRR!)

It seems for several of us here, the only option is to set up forwarding to another address and just never bother using the university assigned email directly.

cfr · 2015-06-04 15:44:15

Trilby wrote:

My new institution uses only outlook OWA. You *must* run outlook (and it must be in windows) or you can only use the web interface. I've contacted IT about it, and apparently they don't care at all about mac/linux/android/iphone users and have refused to activate IMAP. (GRR!)
It seems for several of us here, the only option is to set up forwarding to another address and just never bother using the university assigned email directly.

What is most maddening about this is that they are disabling IMAP. That is, it is enabled right now. On Monday, they'll switch it off.

I mentioned forwarding (which I already use for one of my two accounts) and have been told that 'this should not be happening'. That is, we are not supposed to forward to an external address. So the only option is the web interface? Which is horrible.

Did you look at davmail? Or evolution? Do they just not work any more?

Note that Mac, Android and iOS users can manage without IMAP. There are instructions for those devices. But no options for Linux users...?

Trilby · 2015-06-04 16:01:06

I haven't tried evolution - but to me that seems no better than the web interface (maybe worse due to all the dependencies). The only thing I'd consider an actual solution (even a poor solution) would be something that would allow me to use mutt/mbsync with it. I just started looking into davmail based on your post (thanks for the idea) - this may be possible, but it looks like quite a load of stuff to set up.

For us, however, we have no options available for android. There is a specific outlook app for android that may work - but this does not get integrated into the rest of the mail system and is a separate app all together. So for me this is worse than just using the web interface from my phone's browser.

cfr · 2015-06-04 17:13:13

I agree the options are not good. Would you let me know what you think of the davmail possibility? I agree it looks involved, indeed. It just looked like the only potentially nice solution. ('Nice' means I can use alpine or Thunderbird.)

I'm not keen on evolution. I'm just desperate. I don't have any Android/iOS/Mac devices, so I read email entirely on desktop/laptop and both run Linux. Hence the support for mobile devices available here, while an improvement over your institution's stance, doesn't help me really. (Clearly it would help you. Too bad it isn't the other way round.)

Is there any reason you know of to turn off IMAP support? I just can't understand why they're doing it.

Last edited by cfr (2015-06-04 17:13:45)

Trilby · 2015-06-04 17:58:03

They claim here that turning on IMAP support is a security risk. They are talking out of their arse when they say that, but that is their excuse. <conspiracy nut> I suspect there is some MS documentation suggesting that IMAP is insecure, so they should shut it off and make everyone use MS software </conspiracy nut>

mauritiusdadd · 2015-06-05 05:57:19

Trilby wrote:

<conspiracy nut> I suspect there is some MS documentation suggesting that IMAP is insecure, so they should shut it off and make everyone use MS software </conspiracy nut>

It seems that IMAP and POP3 are turned off by default in exchange online (Office 356)

Last edited by mauritiusdadd (2015-06-05 08:47:20)

x33a · 2015-06-05 06:26:54

Just when we think MS might be fading away, they come up with new ways to torment FOSS users.

brebs · 2015-06-05 06:59:09

cfr wrote:

I'm not clear if this would work with Office 365

Well, 10 seconds of googling for "office 365 imap" shows encouraging davmail fixed bug report.

Some things I would raise:

* Check the IT policy regarding whether Linux is supported/accepted. And if not, why not.
* Push for clarification regarding the supposed security risk, or whatever is being used as justification.

Trilby · 2015-06-05 11:01:14

Brebs, IT doesn't care whether we understand why or why not something is supported and they certainly will not spend any time providing clarifications. Requests for this information are completely ignored or redirected indefinitely (runaround).

cfr · 2015-06-09 15:30:27

brebs wrote:

cfr wrote:
I'm not clear if this would work with Office 365
Well, 10 seconds of googling for "office 365 imap" shows encouraging davmail fixed bug report.

Thanks. Sorry. I did spend a lot of time searching but I did not find that. (Using IXQ for search.) But I was not trying 'imap' specifically - rather 'linux' - as I just wanted any way to access it. And the results I got tended to assume the Exchange server had imap enabled.

Some things I would raise:
* Check the IT policy regarding whether Linux is supported/accepted. And if not, why not.
* Push for clarification regarding the supposed security risk, or whatever is being used as justification.

As Trilby pointed out, this is useless.

Linux is not supported except on a 'best effort' basis. I run Linux on my office PC. I'm entirely responsible for it. Local IT will help if they possibly can. Central IT will say that Linux is supported sufficiently because you can use web mail.

They do not need to justify this. There does not need to be an answer to 'why not?'

No justification has been offered for switching off the support. Trilby's IT invoke security to justify not turning it on. My IT offer no reason for turning it off. It is just a fact that it is being switched off.

[For some reason, it has not yet been switched off, although they said it would be yesterday.]

The suggestion of raising these issues may sound perfectly reasonable, but it is a suggestion based on ignorance of reality.

In a sane world, it would make perfect sense. But this is academia in 2015. (Not just academia, I know.) Sanity is an irrelevant standard.

Last edited by cfr (2015-06-09 15:31:28)

Trilby · 2015-06-09 16:12:29

cfr wrote:

But this is academia in 2015. (Not just academia, I know.) Sanity is an irrelevant standard.

Priceless. I may have to put that on our lab's quote board.

CFR, it may not be the simple answer you'd hope for, but I'd suggest getting to know some of the people on campus who make their living working with computers - not IT, they make their living working with people (at least in theory). Computer science* and bioinformatics departments tend to find ways around this nonsense, and generally they'd be happy to share pointers with computer literate people who can ask well formed questions. I would be surprised if people in those departments haven't found a workaround as I don't see them using outlook and/or web-based interfaces.

*note: CS departments vary widely. Some are just teaching how to make fancy web pages and mobile apps. If this is what yours is like don't bother checking with them. But good CS programs actually work with computers.

cfr · 2015-06-12 12:14:54

Thanks, Trilby. The way CS seems to work around it is by running their own mail server which is accessible via standard protocols. At least pre-2013 students and 'most staff' seem to have this. Others are told to use the web interface for Office 365 or, for staff, Outlook 2013. I might see if there's somebody I can email to ask whether they have any suggestions for Linux.

Local IT think Evolution should work so I might give that a try. (Local IT are rather different from central IT. They do actually seem to live in the real world, for example.)

I'd rather use alpine or Thunderbird, but Evolution sounds a lot better than the web interface or paying for a Thunderbird plugin.

The whole thing is ridiculous. Who in their right mind would set up an email system incompatible with unix-type systems, for goodness sake?

[I do realise that the answer is 'nobody' and that the presupposition that it is done by people in their right minds is the source of my incomprehension.]

Arch Linux

#1 2015-06-04 15:02:51

How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#2 2015-06-04 15:09:05

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#3 2015-06-04 15:44:15

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#4 2015-06-04 16:01:06

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#5 2015-06-04 17:13:13

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#6 2015-06-04 17:58:03

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#7 2015-06-05 05:57:19

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#8 2015-06-05 06:26:54

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#9 2015-06-05 06:59:09

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#10 2015-06-05 11:01:14

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#11 2015-06-09 15:30:27

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#12 2015-06-09 16:12:29

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

#13 2015-06-12 12:14:54

Re: How to establish a Microsoft Exchange connection (Office 365)?

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