I'm asking on behalf of my old man who's now using an Australian-based email account for business purposes. At the moment, he accesses it via HTTP, using MS Outlook Web Access.

The problem is, it's rather buggy (I've suggested he tries using Firebird and although it's not MS-compliant, I can log in and it kind of works).

A lot of emails he receives has rather large attachments (>5MB) and he has to download them as and when needed. The problem is the buggy interface, or maybe it's his installation of IE, crashes half the time during download.

I guess he could use MS Outlook and have a remote Exchange server configured and work offline to have the local files synchronised, but he does hate Outlook with a passion (that's probably my fault ).

For all his other email, he uses Thunderbird and it's set up using pop / imap servers as per normal. He'd much rather have the emails of this Australian account in Thunderbird. All attachments are downloaded when he picks up his email which allows him to work offline.

Is there a MS Exchange plugin available for Thunderbird?

Or is there another simple email client that is Exchange compatible?

Any advice greatfully received.

Cheers guys

It's not usually a case of having a compatible client, more often the issue is that the exchange server is on a corporate network behind a firewall and Web Access is the only permissible tunnel through that firewall. Is that not the case here?

It's not usually a case of having a compatible client, more often the issue is that the exchange server is on a corporate network behind a firewall and Web Access is the only permissible tunnel through that firewall. Is that not the case here?

Yeah, you're probably right Nick.

Actually, I have a horrible suspicion I posted about this some time ago - wasn't for this particular case... Hmm/...

We could try and ring their technical support, it's just that they're Auzzy based and won't be able to do anything till next week. Maybe they'll say "oh yes, we also have a pop / imap (doubt the imap bit) portal for accessing email". If so, then great

I was just wondering if there was a way of having an email client automate the logging in / retrieving new webmail for OWA-based pages

We have Outlook Web Access as well. The latest version seems better, but I agree it's buggy. For instance you can't open emails if the subject ends in a dot.

It also doesn't work well with the pop-up blockers on my PC (Windows XP SP2 and Mcafee), even if you add the URLs to the "trusted" list. I read somewhere that OWA doesn't fully work with Firefox - presumably it will work best with IE.

Does his company allow POP3 and SMTP through their firewall? Although most companies will filter most ports, HTTP, POP3 and SMTP are allowed through, just for these purposes. If they do, he can just setup Outlook Express to collect and send email as if it were a "normal" ISP...

We sure as h*ll don't allow POP, SMTP or IMAP through ours :eek:

Newer version of OWA much nicer - shame my (computer vendor) company is still in the stone age in that respect

I'm using this at the moment :thumbdwn:

We do have some of our students using it and as long as the account is set corrently it can be run using a pop system but that does mean nothing will be stored/backed up on the company systems.

Most of our students are using Outlook (looks like that's not an option for you) with the pop address so I would expect a lot of email systems should be able to deal with it.

Good luck it getting it sorted.

EDIT: Should have said that as it's just our students who use pop access they are severely restricted to internal mail only.

We sure as h*ll don't allow POP' date=' SMTP or IMAP through ours :eek:

Newer version of OWA much nicer - shame my (computer vendor) company is still in the stone age in that respect [/quote']

Why not?? :confused: We don't allow IMAP, but POP and SMTP are OK. Well, at least SMTP is. If you don't allow this through, you won't be getting any emails into your system! :P

POP3 shouldn't be too much of a problem, either. The important thing is, you have to barricade your server against relaying. Should be alright after that. If you're network's setup OK, you shouldn't have a problem!

OWA that comes with Exchange 2003 is VERY nice. Much more XP-ey...and you can mark emails as unread!

I didn't mean we don't allow it from servers just pleb's desktops, like me... hence the only way I can access my personal mail is via a web client. Clearer now?

I didn't mean we don't allow it from servers just pleb's desktops, like me... hence the only way I can access my personal mail is via a web client. Clearer now?

Errrrr...sort of... Why wouldn't your IT dept allow POP and SMTP from internal PCs, though???? Do they allow Exchange ???

Just a bit puzzled as to why they'd allow external access but not internal access???

We have a network of exchange servers around the world. We lease bandwidth to communicate between offices, and for internet access. Bandwidth (especially in Europe) is expensive. Exchange is _normally_ to your local server, but still works if you are elsewhere in the company on the intranet. The decision to restrict pop and smtp from internal clients from going out through the firewall is just one based on cost, and possibly an element of potential virus control also.

Outlook web access is http (https to be precise). You use it to access your exchange server from outside the firewall. (we do have vpns as well, so actually OWA doesn't get that much use nowadays except maybe when we're on a customer's network) so there's no issue with smtp etc there because it's all done by the exchange server (not sure if there's still an additional gateway product, there used to be).

All our mail comes INTO the company via one point, in the US, and is relayed from there. I'm not sure about the outward path, i.e. smtp, but I think that's probably the same. I'm not a network admin, and I've been away from the company for a few years and come back, so I'm a bit rusty on the exact infrastructure.

Ah! I see. Fair enough, then. Not sure about the virus control bit, though, since most viruses come in AS an email, rather than across the transport that supports it.

We also use OWA all over the place. Initially, it was because we had issues with configuring Outlook's settings with our mandatory AD profiles. Although we still use mandatory profiles, we've solved our roaming Outlook settings problem. Probably 75% of our users still use OWA, though, since it's dead easy to use and provides 99% of the functionality they need.