Exchange under Mountain Lion

@sandbridge @smittyrocks

I'm sorry but what you described is not the total answer.

Have you read this, this, this, this, this and this?

There's more going on than just "fixing autodiscover settings".

I want to ask again if this temporary fix works:

BiffqrgRwrzhwrerz wrote:

Here´s a temporary fix that works:

Open Mail.

Adjust your settings as desired in your account preferences.

Open Terminal, located in /Applications/Utilities.

Set the re-autodiscovery interval to something like 100 days by pasting or typing this command in Terminal, followed by Enter:

defaults write com.apple.mail ReautodiscoveryTimerInterval 8640000

We have an external adress es well and I could live working with this fix untill Apple pushes out a permanent fix. AND: can this Terminal command be undoed?

The hosts file workaround is currently holding for me for over one week so far - let's hope it continues as all attempts by myself and others to ask our IT dept to check/change the exchange server results in - apple operating systems are not supported in our enviroment - It feels a bit like "we told you so" - unfortunatly this sounds like any future purchases will have to be in-line with the organsations policy of "as a Microsoft gold partner we only support Microsoft"

Just when we were moving over to Mac Book Airs using ML - SandyBridge's explanaction sounds about right to me seems a great pity - we need an autodiscovery opt-out if we are to continue using ML.

No, I just tried it and it does not work.

Dear Apple users, in my opinion is a Mountain Lion slap in the face for all business customers with Exchange account. Apple currently plays with this customer. The customer feedback is certainly to be expected.

Best regards

Kolobok

Just an update.... I posted a fix for my Exchange issue a dozen pages back or so, basically I set my external server to my MS OWA address and checked the SSL boxes. All has been working fine.

One of the engineers called me last night to discuss the Exchange issue and this thread in particular. I agreed to have some diagnostics run on my machine that could assist the engineers resolve the issue. Bottom line is that the boys at Apple are aware of this problem and are working on a fix right now. I know it's frustrating and I'm as disappointed as the rest of you about this problem since I use Exchange for business, but sit tight and be patient for a fix. It's coming. Throwing hissy fits doesn't help anything.

Dudes,

Tgara - Wise words at last! Apple invests millions in providing these forums for one reason - to assess customer feedback, to think they ignore this stuff is madness. I think it is so funny when people complain about a product and ignore the fact that Apple asks for feedback every step of the way.

I've been following this post from the beginning and it seems to have gotten a little lost and exposed to a bit of Voodoo mythology. So;

IOS working fine, that's because by default IOS only uses the external server.

It worked in Lion, I had to manually enter my external address settings in Lion before I could get it to work. Don't get me started on all the problems SL has with EWS exchange accounts.

Host file fix, yes it works and is the current only immediate WORKAROUND for all of those users who have a hosted service, or operate off the same internal network as the exchange server, don't connect to the exchange server via VPN and can't instruct an IT department to make changes to their exchange autodisovery settings. This fix is also not difficult to perform, especially given some of the fantastic advice given on this forum. If you can't follow simple instructions then maybe exchange not working on your MAC ain't your biggest problem 😮.

Exchange is causing the problem, maybe for some of you as I doubt every sing exchange server is correctly configured. Go to https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com you can pull down your autodiscovery XML, from what I can tell it is correct, although I am no expert and have asked my hosting service to verify.

ML is bugged, maybe, but I suggest it is more a question of it not being compatible with a lot of exchange setups in it's present form, it aint with mine and a fix from Apple may help.

Changing the autodiscovery interval on the client, doesn't work as once connected to the exchange server it pulls the autodiscovery settings directly from the EWS folder. FWIW I removed the autodiscovery DNS record for one of my domains, flushed my cache and then went to configure my account. Bingo - no autodiscovery, manual control of server settings - for all of about a minute - once connected ML mail pulled them directly from the server and updated them. You can see it doing this in the activity window.

An override is the best fix, wrong, that means autodiscovery doesn't work on the MAC and Apples out of the box compatibility with MS exchange brag doesn't live up, given current rivalry between MS and Apple I doubt this very much. Windows certainly doesn't support exchange out of the box, indeed you gotta by outlook!

Outlook for MAC is a suitable solution, IMHAHO, NO IT IS NOT, it is a menace and not fit for purpose. Another deliberate attempt to devalue your MAC experience.

Running out and upgrading business critical, personal critical, all your office machines or any other important computer to the first edition of a new OS, is frankly daft, FOR EXACTLY THIS REASON 😠. Have you learnt now?

Missing email, folders or other erroneous anomalies that are being reported are unlikely to do with this thread. However, I suspect some users may be having problems due to incomplete syncronisation with the exchange server. For the novices, check your activity window in mail>window>activity - when it goes blank you know your done. If a rebuild doesn't cure it delete the account and start again, checking that you get fully syncronised before you close it.

Finally for the school of thought that autodiscovery is configured wrong check this article http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/how-exchanges-autodiscover-works-with-mail-app/ .

If you are that angry submit feedback to Apple through the feedback feature in mail.app. In the mean time, use OWA if you have access to it or go off and explore the rest of Mountain Lion which is the greatest version of Mac OSX yet and IMHO the best OS on the market.

Have fun, play nice and respect others!!!

P.S. 2012 London best Olympics ever!

In reply to thatwilson above

Ouch - yes I have learned that running out and upgrading business critcal machine is frankly daft - Despite company policy I/we got carried away on the sucess of iPads/iPhones, Lion iMacs and MB Airs all over the office enviroment (even the IT support guys are using Airs and iPhones) - Apple called me today and acknowleged "there is a bug in ML exchange access - we are looking into it" - I bought a retina MB Pro - OUCH - need to be less impulsive - I'm sure a fix will come along - Jony I've did not sign off on a "state of the art" laptop that will not send or receive emails in a business enviroment

Thanks to everyone who has contributed - be patient Bugs Happen - Hosts file workaround is good for now.

Not sure if this will help anyone else, but I found that I could restore basically full functionality by setting up my account as an IMAP account instead of Exchange. This can be done by just leaving the password field blank when first setting up the account in Mail prefs. So far this is working great: I have multiple accounts off the Exchange server and no real glitches to speak of. I haven't noticed any obvious disadvantages (in fact, it's much more responsive than it ever was in Lion), and new messages are now pushed to Mail instead of having to check the server every minute. I have left my account set up in Calendar as an Exchange account and that continues to work just fine (it always did).

I have done the same thing successfully. Though I'm sure there are reasons why an "exchange" account is better than an "imap" account in Mail. Hopefully Apple will let us know when the fix is completed, so we can go back to an "exchange" account, if that is more desireable.

I reported this workaround about 12 pages ago. It is the only fix for now especially if the user needs to use excahnge while on the domain and remotely.

DEAR ALL

Exchange account is working for the last 2 days. I did follow instructions of "Sgreen0313" from 28th page. Although it did not complete the "Reset Home Folder Permission and ACLs"(after waiting for 12 hours) BUT it appears helped with the problem. It required twice booting. I chekced the account settings, internal server is exactly like external server. No need to write down ip address ( i.e, it is written as web address automatically or alter anyother settings.

Cheers

GURALP

I think there is more than a little rubbish been written in this topic. Lets start with a few facts.

IOS uses ActiveSync to access Exchange while MacOS uses OWA. So what works on one has little to do with what works on the other.

As far as I know all the code concerned is licensed by Apple from Microsoft. So this really is a Microsoft problem.

There are reports that Windows 8 has almost identical issues! This is not suprising if it is Microsoft's code.

I believe the root of the problem is misconfiguration of the Exchange servers. System Admins don't tend to bother about whether something is correct. As long as it works with the client they are interested in at that moment, that is as far as most of them go.

The client software is becoming more fussy about configuration. A lot of this is driven by security concerns.

The result is that server misconfigurations which used to be acceptable now break things.

One delicious result is that the spiffy new Surface tablet with Windows 8 (FKAM formerly known as Metro) often breaks when the iPad or iPhone works. That is nice.

Guralp,

In addition to the Exchange bug, I think that you and I (and possibly others) had other things going on as well. It sounds like you might want to do the repair disk permissions routine in the dick utility program and then try again on resetting your home permissions.

The host file fix has been working for me for some time now. In addition to the Exchange bug I had empty folders that wouldn't rebuild and it wasn't until I reset ACLs on my home folder that it stopped happening. I've been a very happy camper for the last week or so.

I think sandbrige has basically the right idea (this is clearly an issue where exchange servers are misconfigured in a way that previously was sloppily ignored, but now is causing a problem with the more strictly "compliant" implementation of autodiscover in Mountain Lion).

I think sandbridge is wrong about his implication that his explanation is 100% accurate, at least in my case.

Despite what he asserted (below), what is happening on my work network is that Mail is rewriting my INTERNAL server, on every restart of Mail, with the address "sites". Yes, the /etc/hosts workaround works for me (by mapping "sites" to the IP of the actual exchange server.

But this has nothing to do with the external server for me. Mail is flat out rewriting the INTERNAL server. The external server has always been and remains blank. This is on a wired mac in the office, not a laptop, hence why I've never had an external server needed.

Again, Mail is rewriting the INTERNAL server, presumably from some mis-set setting on the exchange server. The solution is the same--get our outsourced IT people to properly configure the mail server--but sandbridge's explanation sounds a bit different than what I'm seeing.

MORE IMPORTANTLY (to me): Mail has been working for me since I updated /etc/hosts, but iCal IS NOT. It has been completely dead and unable to see new additions to the calendar since Mountain Lion. Note, it's on the same mac that I updated /etc/hosts, and Mail works normally now, but iCal is just dead to the exchange server. I deleted and recreated the calendar account in iCal and it saw the full calendar on the exchange server, then immediatley broke again.

I'm a little lost that no one anywhere on the 'net seems to be talking about iCal, just Mail.

sandbridge wrote:

Solved.

I found the solution to the central problem described in this thread (notwithstanding some completely unrelated peripheral issues persistent since Lion, according to others on this board). And no one here is going to like it, because you can't fully solve it without help from your corporate Microsoft administrator friends. But I've tested it and it's true.

Mountain Lion 10.8's "full implementation" of Microsoft Exchange autodiscovery is quite dictatorial. It's also fully consistent with Apple's pronouncement in its TS4363: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4363viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

What Mountain Lion does is check regularly with Exchange autodiscovery and reset the external server to what it's told from the Exchange server. This would be a good thing if you ever changed your server-side settings; it would update seamlessly. But it's a bad thing if you rely on overriding that autoconfiguration manually on your Mac to make things work.

Once I described the problem and this board to our (outsourced) IT people, they looked at our Exchange server and found that the prescribed "external server" for autodiscovery on the Exchange server had been left blank. So it was sending the internal server for both.

While the /etc hosts workaround did function partially for me, having the Exchange server properly configured to send via autodiscovery the full and correct external settings is the only full solution to the problem.

So it's your choice who to blame: your Microsoft Exchange administrator for not fully configuring the server, or Apple for making it impossible to override manually the autodiscovery function to compensate.

Or you can just set aside blame and live happily forever after in harmony with your imperfect surroundings. Namaste.