Snow Leopard with Exchange support not working

Martin Gray wrote:
Very disappointing! Just installed Snow Leopard and first task was to set up my NHSmail exchange mail account, in the autodiscover window on completing my password and hitting return I get a few seconds of the wheel turning, then mail crashes! I've never seen anything like it on a Mac OS before! Thank goodness that Entourage Web services edition works to connect to my email, again using autodiscover, with no problem.
Still can't quite believe that the microsoft solution works better than the apple solution!
Is this going to get fixed?

Martin

I too upgraded to 10.6 today with the expectation that mail would handle my NHSMail account (which uses exchange server 2007) and that I could finally bin Entourage. My mail also crashes upon entering my password. Exactly the same happens when iCal and address book try to discover the NHSMail exchange server. Pretty poor show really, especially given that my NHS account has synchronised perfectly on my iPhone since OS 2.0.

I can’t even find a way to manually enter the server details.

Dan

Try cutting SSL on or off for either Internal or External servers. At least for me, these setting were quite different than those on my iPhone. You can't hurt anything -- I promise!!

As for the rest of these raging discussions --

There are so many different variations of configurations for Exchange Server 2003 and 2007 that it would blow your mind. I do Windows Server and Exchange support for a living. It is much more about having the correct services cut on than anything. Most network admins are much more worried about someone breaking into their systems and so they are going to be reluctant to make any changes just for the Mac.

Here's another disappointed NHS.net user.

Can access Exchange server using iPhone and MS Entourage and though it was reasonable to expect Snow Leopard to do likewise.

Can trick it not to crash by setting up a dummy account and then switching in the settings to the correct Exchange settings. Still won't work.

Any advice?

I can tell you that where I work they have Exchange 2007 and connecting Mail to it was super easy and it works seamlessly. They do not allow access through their firewall so Mail won't work from home without using VPN. But neither will Windows Outlook. They do allow outside access to Outlook Web Access (OWA) so I generally use Safari to get to my work email from home.

A A P L wrote:
OK. If you're so enlightened, you should know that Active Sync is a separate and unique method on an EXCH server to get mail to mobile devices.
It's NOT how computers get email.

I totally understand that ActiveSync is for mobile devices and that is why they chose that option for the iPhone, but technically speaking the iPhone OS is a stripped down version of Mac OS X, and basically the iPhone OS and iPhone are just small computers. So even though it is a mobile device, the iPhone is not the "mobile device" of yesteryear. It clearly seems to me that Apple could have included this in the SL upgrade. Just my two cents!

Hey guys. Let's look at this situation logically. And, btw, I am an Exchange Admin and a user of a MBPro on a Windows network that uses Exchange 2007 (and before that 2003) for all e-mail services. iPhone using ActiveSync works great, of course. That's a separate and distinct process that Exchange uses. Snow Leopard using Exchange 2007 EWSworks for me, too. Snow Leopard is set up to take avantage of EWS services that are available ONLY through Exchnage 2007. However, you can still use Mail.app if your Exchange 2003 OR Exchange 2007 server is set by your admin to use iMAP services. This means there are two ways to connect Mail.app to Exchange 2003/2007.

But, YOU NEED TO GET YOUR EXCHANGE ADMINS TO HELP YOU. Apple can't do this - they've done everything they can do opn the Mac side to make this work.

If Exchange is not set up properly to allow you to use Apple Mail to connect, you will simply not be able to connect using Snow Leopard. Period.

Make sense?

I have been a Software Engineer for years, and I completely agree with you Rewski - the iPhone is a computer just like my Mac. There is no reason they couldn't have made Mac Mail app work the same way using Active Sync - unless it's a licensing or legal issue (it probably was). It's NOT a software issue - A A P L - you should know the classification of 'mobile device' is ambiguous and arbitrary. From a software perspective, Apple could have used the same method on Mail.app that they used on the iPhone. They chose not to.

Message was edited by: homerZ

Please read Chris' reply above.
It's saying what I've said.
He's an admin.
You guys can keep placing blame in the wrong direction, but it won't change it.
There's good reason(s) why AS is separate, and it's going to stay that way.

Homerz, what does being a software engineer haver to do with this? If Microsoft decides it wants to allow certain connection types and disallow others that's what Microsoft will do. Exchange is an enterprise e-mail product, and as such is complex and almost infinitely configurable. If the optoins that allow Macs to connect aren't made available (switched on) by an admin you won't be able to connect. Apple can't configure Exchange for you.

That said, I do fault Apple for the way they've marketed Snow Leopard's Exchange connectivity. They could be much clearer and make the obvious caveats - which would go a long way toward diminishing the frustration I see being expressed in this topic.

Chris Marti wrote:

...That said, I do fault Apple for the way they've marketed Snow Leopard's Exchange connectivity. They could be much clearer and make the obvious caveats - which would go a long way toward diminishing the frustration I see being expressed in this topic.

As did I during testing. I said they should knock it off knowing full-well these threads would pop up.
I'm vindicated and mad all at once 🙂

I bought SL thinking Mail was going to be as simple to configure as my iPhone. It's pretty disappointing that I can't get it to work with my company's email.

I do not understand why people are getting heated here. MS Entourage has always worked with Exchange without having to "dick with" IT guys and Exchange settings, the Mail app has never worked and still doesn't, (a lot of IT people are hostile to Macs and go out of their way not to be helpful a typical response is go away I do not support Macs). Like others I am keen to ditch MS Entourage and use Mail and iCal so that all the syncing issuses that occur by going via Entourage will be sorted and that I thought was the promise of SL.

Wow, that's a completely false (and somewhat naive) statement. Neither Entourage 2004, 2008, or 2008 Web Services Edition have worked correctly with my Exchange Server in Exchange mode, only in IMAP mode, and that's not what we're going for here. I'm sure once we figure out the problem with the Exchange Server settings, both Apple Mail AND Entourage Web Services Edition will both work properly.

I'm guessing most of the problem lies with the Exchange Server configuration; I think we're talking it out so we can determine what we need to say to the IT staff, because -- in the real world -- the IT staff DOES lock things down or simply just doesn't understand, particularly where Macs are involved.

I'm not really disagreeing with you Chris, or A A P L. All I am saying is that it is not a SOFTWARE limitation. More of a theoretical argument... If they can put code to use Active Sync in the iPhone OS, they can put it in MAC OS. It is probably a licensing issue that prevents them from doing it. Or, like you said, it isn't as fully featured / configurable as full exchange, so it wouldn't be an optimal solution. That's fine. But strictly speaking about software - they could have coded it to use AS just like they coded the iPhone to.

Obviously it's more complex then what I am saying here, I'm just talking from a CODE point of view. Perhaps you are saying the AS server would recognize it was being accessed from a MAC and not an iPhone and treat it differently? In that case one could spoof that it was coming from iPhone OS. Not a good solution, but you get my point - it's not really a software limitation we are arguing about here. I still agree with Rewski - if it can be coded to work on iPhone, it can be coded to work on the Mac. That's how software works. That's the only reason I mentioned being a software engineer.

I agree with all of you that it was marketed wrong. I too was mislead into thinking it would work with my setup, and it does not. They marketed it very much the same way as they did with the iPhone, but the iPhone works for most folks, so there isn't much of an issue there.

Or...they deem security issues having more protocols open for use.
It's corporate red-tape often-times.
There's reasons for this, and all the griping here won't change it.
You need to work with your admins.
IT may not like Macs - I wouldn't either if I had to use a Windows machine - but that dig won't help you either.
I deal with it - have dealt with it for over 20 years.
You have to work with the system you have.
Apple can't change that.