NHS.NET mail and el-capitan

Mail (El Capitan): Set up Mail with your email accounts

Make sure you have the correct config for the email server. In Mail make sure automatically detect and save is unchecked.

Thanks for raising this Gideon I have just the same problem - I can get NHS mail on my iPhone and iPad but not on my IMAC - I am sure that it is an El Capitan issue. Raised this with apple - got very helpful support - but did not solve the issue. Also looked at the guidance re ports etc on the webmail NHS portal but that did not help either. The Apple support person concluded that we will have to wait for Apple to sort El Capitan out ....

It is good to see someone else having similar issues to me. HSared with three of my colleagues at work. I can get mail on el capitan to work with NHS net email but then periodically it just stops. As stated it works fine on all other iOS devices just not Mail on El Capitan. TO get it working again I ahve to remove the account and then set it up again from scratch and it works (sometimes have to wait a long time) Some of the messages I get suggest that at some point the security protocls used by Mail are not acceptable but I get a month or two at a time before the next failure to work. I too have been through Mac support and NHS net mail support and no solution fund as yet so agree that it looks like an issue in El Capitan but do wish apple would solve..

I suspect it's because few people access NHS mail from their iMac Mail - most probably use webmai and their mobile devices

Strictly speaking this is not an Apple problem it is firstly an NHS problem and secondly a Microsoft problem.

Microsoft has ended support for Exchange 2007 themselves, this means not only is an Exchange 2007 server no longer supported but Microsoft no longer support accessing an Exchange 2007 from Outlook 2016. Both of these issues are purely down to Microsoft and nothing to do with Apple and strictly speaking nothing to do with El Capitan.

It is possible to still run Outlook 2011 for Mac under El Capitan and it I believe it still can access an Exchange 2007 server account.

The NHS being a government department is not only running unsupported Exchange 2007 servers but they also still run Windows XP on many desktop computers as well. This says a lot about their IT Management. By the way, some Exchange Server administrators turn off or fail to turn on Exchange Web Services or might block it accidentally or deliberately in a network firewall. As mobile devices e.g. iPhones do not use EWS and as Outlook for Windows also does not use EWS they do so thinking it will not affect anyone, it of course does affect Macs though which only use EWS. I don't think this will apply to you as if this was the case older Mac software would not have worked either.

Now the reason an iPhone and iPad work but a Mac does not is that not only are you comparing different operating systems but you are also comparing different email client applications and different email protocols. Outlook 2011 for Mac and Outlook 2016 for Mac both are Microsoft written applications (not written by Apple) and both use the Microsoft Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol. Almost certainly your iPhone and iPad devices are using the built-in Apple Mail app which uses the Microsoft ActiveSync (EAS) protocol.

Note: Outlook for iOS i.e. iPhone and iPad is now available but hardly anyone uses it. As far as I am aware it also uses Exchange ActiveSync.

To summarise the issue is Microsoft discontinuing support for Exchange 2007 and this specifically affecting EWS clients which means Outlook 2016 for Mac in this case but almost certainly would also apply to using Apple Mac for Mac as an Exchange client.

Your possible solutions for the Mac are -

1. Upgrade your Exchange servers to at least Exchange 2010 and preferably higher, by going say to Exchange 2013 you will avoid hitting this problem again when Microsoft almost certainly soon enough discontinue support for Exchange 2010
2. If you are on a Microsoft volume license you can use your downgrade rights to download and install Office 2011 with Outlook 2011 for Mac and try that
3. Finally you can use Outlook Web Services in Safari on the Mac

PS. Don't forget to give your NHS IT team a good kicking - they deserve it.

I have the same issue since updating to version 10.11.2

I have spent quite a lot of time on the phone with my local IT helpdesk, the national NHS mail helpdesk, Apple support and Microsoft support for Exchange: it all led nowhere. Since NHS mail does not officially support mac and it's based on a outdated customised version of Exchange server, every other provider is not interested and bounces back the problem to them, who aren't interested either.

I heard we should move to NHS mail version 2 (with a different provider, since the contract with the current one has expired) this year: fingers crossed it may support Mac!

In the meantime I will look at the bright side of things and leave work emails where they belong: at work!

Emanuele

Same problem. NHS helpdesk said their policy is to refer us to Apple as its an Apple problem.

Apple could not fix it and say its an NHS net problem.

Very frustrating.

stewartfromrichmond wrote:

Same problem. NHS helpdesk said their policy is to refer us to Apple as its an Apple problem.

Apple could not fix it and say its an NHS net problem.

Very frustrating.

Understandably frustrating, too. So the folks that are running a down-revision and now generally-unsupported and reportedly also customized Microsoft Windows Server Exchange Server mail server configuration — and that are now requiring a now-unsupported Microsoft Outlook mail client — are also suggesting that Apple is somehow involved in this morass? Interesting.

That's going to go nowhere, unfortunately.

This general sequence is how Microsoft has been dragging everybody forward for many years — incompatible new releases force older installations to (also) upgrade to allow access or interoperation or document interchange, etc.

As for NHS, have'm turn on Outlook Web Access if it's not already enabled, and use that. Or have'm turn on the Exchange Server SMTP connector, and use the Apple Mail.app client to access mail that way.

Otherwise with OS X, your options involve loading an older version of OS X — a version where the EULA permits that — into a virtual machine, and using an older version of Outlook there. Or using an older version of Outlook in a VM running Microsoft Windows.

If you have suggestions that NHS folks are unable or unwilling to address, you might want to contact the folks working at the Palace of Westminster. (Down-revision software tends to be insecure, and NHS deals with some sensitive data, after all.)

I have finally found a temporary solution: the application AirMail 2.6 still works with NHS mail on El Capitan: the synchronisation is very slow compared to what I was used to with Mail, but at least I have access.

I'm hoping NHSmail version 2 will restore full compatibility.

I think I have a solution. When you go to Mail and add an exchange account (so you use your NHS username and password) and it fails, it should then show another two boxes for internal and external URLs. I used this in both....

https://outlook.nhs.net/EWS/exchange.asmx

Everything then connected immediately (and yes, I am using El Capitan).

Give it a go...it certainly worked for me