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Friday June 29, 2007
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I've been asking Microsoft for an official word on Exchange support for the iPhone for days now, and they finally got back to me. You see, when Walt Mossberg said "It can also handle corporate email using Microsoft's Exchange system, if your IT department cooperates by enabling a setting on the server," he was talking about IMAP support - a popular, generic email protocol that can be enabled in Exchange.
Here's the bad news: through IMAP you lose a lot, according to Microsoft. For one thing, it's 'pull' email only -- no push. (The exact phrase MS sent to me was, "Through IMAP, iPhone will have the ability to access corporate email on Exchange using basic 'pull' email.") And without Exchange ActiveSync, you don't get access to calendars and contacts or centralized device control, which is important to IT departments.
No word yet on the rumors that the iPhone will eventually support Exchange ActiveSync. And yes, you can kludge the push by redirecting all of your mail through an Outlook Rule to a Yahoo! account. But that's a kludge.
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June 29, 2007 2:01 PM
Most IMAP servers, Exchange included, support the IDLE extension. If the client support it, it allows the server to notify the client of new mail using a persistant IMAP connection. This is very close to push email.
June 29, 2007 2:25 PM
I sent Microsoft some follow-up questions. Support for IMAP IDLE is one of them. I can only go with what they've told me though.
July 1, 2007 3:33 PM
OWA (Outlook Web Access) works fine on the iPhone.
July 5, 2007 2:11 PM
gc2,
Please tell me how you configured your iPhone with OWA. Have been trying to do so but am having difficulty. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
July 5, 2007 3:21 PM
P.S. IMAP is not enabled on my exchange server. Is that going to be a problem??
July 27, 2007 5:13 PM
I've been trying to configure owa or exchange on my iphone without any success. Can someone provide a configuration example. Also, I had problems with my AOL account but found that since my account was a "aim.com" account the big AOL link on the iphone wouldn't configure the account correctly. I found that for aim.com accounts you need to choose "Other" and then set it up as follows:
Address: screenname@aim.com
Incomming Host Name: imap.aol.com
Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.aim.com
enter your screenname as the User Name and enter password in both places.
July 27, 2007 5:35 PM
OK.
OWA works on the iPhone through the Web browser, not the email program. You just use it as a Web page. That's what he's saying. Just go to your regular OWA Web page in the iPhone's Safari browser.
If your IT administrator has not affirmatively turned on IMAP on your Exchange server you CANNOT get Exchange email on the iPhone's email client. The IT admin has to activate IMAP as a server setting. There is no way around that.
July 29, 2007 6:42 AM
Sacha,
I'm sure you would agree that OWA sucks to use on non IE browsers, mainly due to the lack of search functionality.
I think Apple will make Exchange support happen, either through licensing ActiveSync, WebDav like OWA, Entourage, and Evolution, or a more sophisticated approach like what Blackberry has done. It's just too big a business to ignore.
I the Blackberry approach would be interesting, as it would give them a way to put xserves in a lot of businesses.
October 8, 2007 2:15 PM
I have 3 clients with iphones and they all have Small Business Server 03, I have enabled Imap and WebDav and I still can't get Mac Mail to work
October 10, 2007 8:47 PM
Apple iPhone:
I would recommend putting your iPhone onto a wifi network instead of EDGE until you get this up. Edge works fine on updates, but
Go into the main Springboard page (With all the icons)
Tap Settings
Tap Mail
Tap Other
Tap Exchange
Fill in the Name, Email address and a brief description of your work email
In the Incoming Mail Server
Fill in the Host Name of your Weboutlook server. (IE: owa.testserver.com)
Fill in the Username with your domain and username. (IE. TESTDOMAIN\USERNAME)
Fill in your password
In the Outgoing Mail Server
Fill in the Host Name of your Weboutlook server. (Ie. owa.testserver.com)
Fill in the Username with your domain and username. (IE. TESTDOMAIN\USERNAME)
Fill in your password
Tap Save and it should say "Verifying Exchange account information" on top.
The screen should go back to your Mail screen, and you are set.
Go into Mail and you will see your email box in the account tab all the way on top.
October 13, 2007 5:05 PM
Nalins's information does not work with OWA over wireless on my corporate server!! Maybe if imap is enabled on the Exchange server. If not....you don't have to try it....its not working! OWA is mostly enabled without imap!!
Go into the main Springboard page (With all the icons)
Tap Settings
Tap Mail
Tap Other
Tap Exchange
Fill in the Name, Email address and a brief description of your work email
In the Incoming Mail Server
Fill in the Host Name of your Weboutlook server. (IE: owa.testserver.com)
Fill in the Username with your domain and username. (IE. TESTDOMAIN\USERNAME)
Fill in your password
In the Outgoing Mail Server
Fill in the Host Name of your Weboutlook server. (Ie. owa.testserver.com)
Fill in the Username with your domain and username. (IE. TESTDOMAIN\USERNAME)
Fill in your password
Tap Save and it should say "Verifying Exchange account information" on top.
The screen should go back to your Mail screen, and you are set.
Go into Mail and you will see your email box in the account tab all the way on top.
March 18, 2008 11:18 AM
My IT admin was saying something about IMAP 3 and 4 was the difference? Not sure what he was talking about. Does anyone have any further explanation?
April 7, 2008 9:43 PM
IMAPI works pretty good with the iphone and exchange, no where near as good as a BB but close.