Closed Bug 128284 Opened 23 years ago Closed 4 years ago

[RFE] Allow Mozilla to connect with Exchange server using Extended MAPI protocol (without IMAP)

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Networking, enhancement)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Networking
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: schapel, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: helpwanted, Whiteboard: parity-oe) 

In many companies, the e-mail server is an Exchange server that is not
configured to use IMAP. As far as I know, Outlook or Outlook Express are the
only e-mail programs that can connect with these servers to send and receive
e-mails. This is an RFE for Mozilla to be able to send and receive e-mail
through these Exchange servers so that employees can use their favorite e-mail
client.
What protocol does one use to talk to Exchange servers when not using IMAP?  Is
it even public?  Or would we have to reverse-engineer Outlook?
I don't think it's public.
And I don't think it will ever be implemented in mozilla.

If you are using Linux you can buy Bynari Insight or Ximian Connector for
Evolution when it will be available.

Or you can make your administrators to allow IMAP.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Keywords: helpwanted
QA Contact: huang → gchan
If we can add exchange support, it would help us greatly in the corporate world
the protocol used to talk to a MS Exchange server is public and well documented.
It's called Extended Mapi and it's already used in Mozilla to Import Mails from
Outlook.
My university just switched to Exchange Server 2003 and will not allow IMAP
access. Already tried asking and got this response "Exchange and Outlook allow
us the flexibility to filter out spam and viruses." When I read that I gave up
asking for IMAP support, no amount of reasoning is going to change their mind.

Would be awsome if Mozilla and/or Thunderbird could connect with the Exchange
Server :)

Anyone looking into this?
exchange protocol is at least known by some people in the world of free software:

 * Evolution by Ximian as a commercial addon to connect to an exchange server. 

 * Additionnaly, I have seen this link given on KDEdotnews today:
http://www.warande.net/~johannes/software/outlook.php
There is a GPL script in Perl called outlook grabber which allows to get the
mail fromn an exchange server. The coder does not support it any more since he
cannot access to any exchange server, but he would certainly transfer his knowledge.

 * There seems to be (see previous project page) a BSD project on sourceforge
with similar functionality
http://sourceforge.net/projects/msweb

And yes, we need a good client for exchange server. After 4 months of outlook, I
really regret Netscape 4.x. I am extremely serious when I say this. Outlook is
hard to use and impossible to use well.
Can somebody with sufficient rights change the summary to reflect Comment #4. 
Summary == Implement Extended MAPI

Also, I believe this really needs to get a little higher visibility if we
seriously want Mozilla to compete in the corporate win32 environment.  Now that
we have implement NTLM authentication (which was holding back an true M$
Explorer replacement), why not Extended MAPI (which will hold back a Outlook
replacement).

I would go as far as to suggest this should be a blocker for Thunderbird.  No
real win32 organization is going to take Thunderbird serious without Extended
MAPI support.
If you want this bug to get higher visibility, the best approach may be to
discuss it in the MozillaZine forums or in the Mozilla newsgroups, and link back
to this bug so others can vote on it.
Summary: [RFE] Allow Mozilla to connect with Exchange server without IMAP → [RFE] Allow Mozilla to connect with Exchange server using Extended MAPI protocol (without IMAP)
Whiteboard: parity-oe
GREAT NEWS ! (sorry for the caps)

The evolution connector module, which gives ximiam evolution the capabilities to
connect and work with an exchange server under MS proprietary protocol has just
been released under the GPL by Novell (which aquired Ximian a few month ago).

It can be found in Gnome CVS:
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/evolution-exchange/

For details about this module, see evolution page. Until now, it was free as in
free beer (thanks to Novell, since it was not free when Ximian was independant)
http://www.novell.com/products/evolution/features.html

So now I guess thunderbird could quite fast integrate this feature, no? (at
least for the GPL version of thunderbird)
Just adding my vote to this since as stated by oliv, the Exchange plugin for
Evolution has been released by Novell under the GPL.

I'd love to see Exchange support added to Thunderbird.  Then I could dump
Outlook and none would be the wiser ;)
(In reply to comment #10)
> Just adding my vote to this since as stated by oliv, the Exchange plugin for
> Evolution has been released by Novell under the GPL.
> 
> I'd love to see Exchange support added to Thunderbird.  Then I could dump
> Outlook and none would be the wiser ;)

Unfortunately, the exchange capability of evolution is not perfect. It requires
some special configuration of the server (Outlook Web Access enabled). So even
when (if) thunderbird/mozilla gets the support, there might still be many
servers which will not work with it.
Kmail will soon have the support for this feature too by the way.

By the way... should this bug "product" category be set to thunderbird or should
it stay in mailnews
Well, it seems there is actually a exchange connector which does not use WebDAV
acces but real acces. Additionally, it is GPL.
It is called Brutus:
http://lwn.net/Articles/101062/
http://www.omesc.com/modules/main_module/
Unfortunately Brutus only runs on windows (as far as I understand).  Its claim
of "platform independent access for client applications to Microsoft Exchange"
is dependent on running their MAPI<->CORBA bridge on windows.  If a company will
not enable IMAP on an exchange server, then I doubt they would run the Brutus
bridge either.
Product: MailNews → Core
*** Bug 272216 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Company has now switched from old Exch Svrs to 2003 version. It has IMAP and POP
off by default unlike old version. Now can't see email on Linux box with IMAP
client like before :( .
Flags: blocking-aviary2.0?
Just a point of interest - while looking for a way for Thunderbird to access Exchange for a friend who has recently been afflicted, I came across this:-

http://www.sourcextreme.com/projects/outlook/mapi/main.html

At a cursory glance, this looks like a better match for Thunderbird than the Brutus code. While I personally don't have to use Exchange, I can see that adding Extended MAPI support to Thunderbird would definitely be a good thing - the ability to break the forced linkage between Exchange and Outlook would do a lot to give people more choice.
Does anybody work on the extended mapi implementation ?
The last comment was added 2005-12-22.
It would be a great feature for tb and would push the corporate use
of tb. 
Does anybody work on the extended mapi implementation ?
The last comment was added 2005-12-22.
It would be a great feature for tb and would push the corporate use
of tb.
There is a GPL library for this available here:
http://www.openchange.org/
I work for a multinational with over 170000 employees. Our Email provision is through Exchange with IMAP turned off. I am sure there are other large companies that have a similar setup, and whose IT managers won't be persuaded to switch IMAP on. If Thunderbird is to have any success in companies such as mine it will need Exchange server connectivity.
Surely the potential millions of extra Thunderbird users would justify the effort of adding Exchange server support?

OpenChange looks good.

It provides:

# MAPI library: It can be used for command line tools development or third party messaging clients development such as Gnome Evolution or Thunderbird
# Gnome Evolution plugin: This development started a few months ago and technical preview are planned all along the MAPI library development.

The Evolution plugin is still very much for developers only, but if they can make it work I see no reason why someone couldn't do the same for Thunderbird.

Please somebody make it happen!
Assignee: mscott → nobody
QA Contact: grylchan → mailnews.networking
Product: Core → MailNews Core
Last comment is 10 months old. Making Thunderbird work with MAPI is a very important enhancement! 

I also work for a large company with 80k employees, which is moving to an Exchange server.

Many co-workers and I do not want to loose Thunderbird, plse help!
users try to ask for new features. When developer do not ear them, they start to look for an alternative. Evolution run very well on Win32 too, and its Exchange plugin work perfectly. Evolution is also the unique solution if you have:
Linux client and an Exchange server
(In reply to comment #21)
> Last comment is 10 months old. Making Thunderbird work with MAPI is a very
> important enhancement!

Age of bugs is extremely poor proxy for development work. If you were to rely on age alone, before this bug were fixed, TB should have a built-in virus checker, include PGP by default, support several more PDA synchronization libraries, have full macro support à la Outlook, have full, native "Microsoft proprietary mail format" support, include embedded sound support, implement the "Herbivore" protocol, support yEnc + multipart email messages, and any other of the 299 enhancements for TB that precede this one in terms of age. If you expand the query to all older TB bugs, you get 809 in total.

So don't argue that a bug should be fixed because of its age.

> I also work for a large company with 80k employees, which is moving to an
> Exchange server.
> 
> Many co-workers and I do not want to loose Thunderbird, plse help!

Enable IMAP in the Exchange server?

(In reply to comment #19)
> There is a GPL library for this available here:
> http://www.openchange.org/

Unfortunately, Mozilla code cannot integrate a GPL library into its codebase since it is not GPL itself (it is MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-licensed). GPL libraries do us no good.
Just a comment not a critique. Most "large" companies probably look upon using TB or anything else for email as a IT policy violation since it it not the "industry standard" outlook. For several years I used TB as my primary email connecting to exchange IMAP when the port was open by default (I think NT exchange). Only comment I got was once someone mentioned my emails "looked different." Then I think Exchange 2003 came out with the IMAP off and my TB email stopped working. No way I would ask them to turn it on since running TB, mozilla, firefox or linux is a IT policy violation. Eventually, I discovered that the POP port on exchanged was actually enabled and used it for a while until they disable it. Of course I still kept outlook running for the calendar stuff.
FWIW, someone is working on a TB extension for this as a GSoC project this summer:
<http://www.openchange.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=139&Itemid=91>.

It would probably not be integrated into TB due to license restrictions (we cannot use GPL code since TB is tri-licensed MPL/LGPL/GPL).
I agree with Gene, and I would like to add my experience: I'm an IT consultant for some small companies in Italy (from 25 to 250 PCs). The most used mailserver/client combination here is MSExhcange+Outlook, because it the simplest to deploy to users (and the BlackBerry integration is wonderful). After a personal analysis, here are my personal tougths which are blocking me to switch to thunderbird as a client for Exchange:
- Exchange Server has been choosen because they have Outlook clients, because it's quite simple to setup and manage and because is strongly supported by Blackberry Enterprise Server
- Mostly needed functionalities, by the user side, of Exchange/Outlook are: Email, personal address book on server, webmail, Blackberry integration. Very few people use Outlook calendars, notes or other features.
- Mostly needed functionality by IT side, of Outlook are the "plug and play" configuration: there is no need to configure client by client, user profile by user profile. Just use the office resource kit and you have an automatically configured outlook in every workstation, for every windows domain user.
- As gene pointed, some user complains that their mail "looks different", but this is not a problem. Just don't pay attention to that user :)

After this small analysis i found that Thunderbird, when in an Active directory domain with Exchange,
- Has a quite complex profile configuration which requires the sysadmin intervention for each new user logging on a machine (specify IMAP, SMTP, LDAP, TLS if needed, windows authentication...). And this is unacceptable when migrating tens of clients.
- Can't access personal contacts of exchange (only global contacts are available via LDAP, in read only mode). The user won't be able to have a unique source of contacts for email client, webmail, blackberry.
- Exchange calendar support would be also very useful, but there is no calendar in thunderbird :(


Having a thunderbird more "Exchange Server friendly" will be a big step ahead for Thunderbird.
Hi everyone.
This issue is a big deal for me, so I'm willing to pay USD 20.00 for it.
This offer is registered on FreedomSponsors (http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/358/rfe-allow-mozilla-to-connect-with-exchange-server-using-extended-mapi-protocol-without-imap).
If you solve it (according to the acceptance criteria described there), please register on FreedomSponsors and mark it as resolved there
I'll then check it out and gladly pay up!

Oh, and if anyone else also wants throw in a few bucks on this, you should check out FreedomSponsors!
Is the "ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange" addon of any use here?
It mentions connecting to Exchange via "Microsoft Exchange Web Services". I am not sure how that relates to "Extended MAPI" mentioned here, but it may be an alternative way of connecting to Exchange.
Blocks: tb-enterprise
I use Exchange EWS Provider 3.5.0 with Thunderbird 38.7.0 and Lightning 4
It let sync Calendar, Tasks and Contacts with Exchange 2007-2013 EWS within Lightning
ExQuilla is indeed a (commercial) alternative for mail and contacts.
For calendar and tasks, I used "Exchange Calendar and Tasks addon", which then was renamed to "Exchange EWS Provider", which however seems not to be maintained any more by the original author, but it has been taken over by someone at Ericsson: https://github.com/Ericsson/exchangecalendar
Otherwise there's Davmail: http://davmail.sourceforge.net
last time I tested Davmail worked with Exchange 2007 well, bad with Exchange 2010 and not with Exchange 2013. This is why I switched to Exchange EWS Provider. If someone test last versione of Davmail with Exchange 2013, plese let know if it work.
Also if MAPI is not supported by Mozilla, at least those alternative way to integrate with enterprise servers that use EWS is a welcome feature
See Also: → 341033

Not going to do this. There's the Owl add-on that supports the exchange family protocols, for those who can't use IMAP/POP directly.

No longer blocks: tb-enterprise
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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