Apple's Mail.app with Exchange 2007 via IMAP or OWA
- Could someone from Microsoft please note that Apple's Mail.app is not able to read Exchange 2007's IMAP or OWA. It is very problematic at even downloading headers, but it is also sporadic at deciding which message bodies it will download off the server. Here is an example of what Mail.app says in the message body:
The message from xxxxxxx <xxxxxxx@u.washington.edu> concerning “RE: xxxxxxx” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.
I assume that this is likely a problem in Microsoft's adherence to the IMAP standard since Apple's email program has worked with almost every other email server and I have tested just about every single one. Mail.app also can be set up to use OWA, but I'm not really sure to what extent it is for since I know it uses IMAP as well in this configuration (I think the purpose may really just be for automatic mapping of the correct folders).
Please let me know (Someone from Microsoft) if you have the ability to recognize this problem. Also, please work with Apple if necessary to fix this.
I support multi-platform environments (OS X/Windows/*NIX) and this has become really frustrating. I've been having to set users up with Mozilla Thunderbird on Apple Computers which has no integration with Apple's iCal or Address Book.app applications.
Answers
- I can confirm - we have similar issues with Apple Mail (2.1.1)
tcpdump shows that Apple Mail asks Exchange for Body and it returned, but Mail does not render it.... - I seem to have issues with IMAP clients in general - Thunderbird, Mail and Entourage are all very slow to access headers connecting to Exchange 2007 and will not reliably download bodies. Entourage works fine using Exchange WebDAV though.
All Replies
- No oppinions, replies, statements, acknowledgements, agreements, ideas????????
- I can confirm - we have similar issues with Apple Mail (2.1.1)
tcpdump shows that Apple Mail asks Exchange for Body and it returned, but Mail does not render it.... - I seem to have issues with IMAP clients in general - Thunderbird, Mail and Entourage are all very slow to access headers connecting to Exchange 2007 and will not reliably download bodies. Entourage works fine using Exchange WebDAV though.
- Someone from Microsoft please chime in and acknowledge...
- I can also confirm this to be a problem
The client logs in, and begins downloading headers, but tends to freeze at about 128 headers downloaded and frequently fails to download message details - I just tried setting the MessageRetrievalMimeFormat to HtmlAndTextAlternative via:
set-IMAPSettings -MessageRetrievalMimeFormat HtmlAndTextAlternative
And that seems to be a decent workaround (it seems to work so far). It defaults to "BestBodyFormat". Who knows what that means. Don't forget to restart the IMAP service after making this change.
Hope this helps.
Jeff Brewer - Still not working for me. It still hangs after downloading messages or "Updating cache directory (comparing notes with server)
Same here. It appears to work okay for many users but for some it does the spinning logo and never returns the message list. Would be good to know if this was an Exchange issue or a Mac Mail.app issue.
- Someone from Microsoft please respond.
- Wow, 2 months and STILL no answer!
I am on Mac Mail as well, and just moved from Exchange Server 2003 to 2007 and about 1 out of every 10 messages for me won't download the body.
Other clients of mine can't download the majority of their messages.
I DID NOT have this problem with Exchange Server 2003, so there is definitely something wrong with 2007.
Real shame as I was excited about this update, until this happened.. now I am informing all of my clients to NOT upgrade.. stick with Exchange 2003 until Microsoft addresses this issue. - Still waiting for someone from Microsoft to acknowledge even this post, much less this issue.
Hi everyone, Im from MS
Just stumbling upon this and I should clarify what is going on to the best of my knowledge:
Exchange works very well with many different pop3/imap4 mail clients, this is really an issue with mail.app. They use some webdav stuff to figure out whats going on with the calenars. They also might be mucking with webdav when attempting to do certain things with mail messages.
However, I can say that we are using mail.app internally and it works great. I will try to get our exact configuration settings to make sure we are all on the same page.
thanks,
Joey
- If you can share your configuration with us it would be greatly appreciated. We've been trying to get Exchange 2007 working properly with apple mail for a while now. We will be moving to Exchange 2007 later this summer, and want to ensure that all the mac clients (About 90) have full access to their mail. We'd like to stay with apple mail, but will move to entourage as a last resort if we have to.
My email is listed in my profile if you'd like to converse with me directly to share some experiences.
Thanks! - I am needing this same information. Will you please post what configurations need to be made.
Thanks Sorry everyone for not responding more quickly
First off, let me say that I do believe that mail.app, as many people are suggesting is indeed using webdav - this may be occurring with pop3/imap4 as well
Secondly, I highly recommend migrating your users over to Entourage as our support story looks much better for you as we fully test and support Entourage for Exchange
now, mail.app allows you to configure it as either a pop, imap or Exchange client. We test and support using mail.app as a pop or imap client. For those of you on this thread that have configured mail.app as an Exchange client, I can only give you a best guess as to what is causing problems.
So, with that, if you are migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007, the firs thing you will need to do is to start the pop3/imap4 service depending on which one you are using. Additionally, for any server side configuration changes you make, you will need to restart the service - remember this down the road...
All configuration for 2003 for pop/imap stays the same for Exchange 2007, so if you are using SSL with password authentication, nothing should really be changing here, you should just be configuring Exchange to use the same ports as usual (either 993 or 995 depending on your protocol). . see this technical article for more details: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997149.aspx
ok, so back to the mail.app as an Exchange client - so, if you are using this method, setup for mail.app asks you to provide your owa server url. In this case, if you do not have your front-end servers upgraded to Exchange 2007, they will not be able to communicate with Exchange 2007 mailbox servers. This is where I *think* the majority of the problems are occurring. so
1. Upgrade your Exchange 2003 servers to Exchange 2007 Client Access servers
2. Start the pop3/imap4 services
3. provide your users with the new owa URL
Also, Im not sure what is going to happen to mail.app users with the self-signed cert provided with Exchange setup, but I highly recommend purchasing a certificate that is trusted as mail.app probably wont work with our Exchange setup cert.
Hope this helps...I will check this forum throughout the week to hear your responses...
- Im just running through all of these responses...what are you configuration details? Are you using password authentication? IMAP or POP? or Exchange as a client config?
Hi Joey,
Thanks for the response.
We too at Azaleos are having this same issue at a customer site undergoing an upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.
In this customer, MAC clients using MAIL 2.1.1 worked just fine with Exchange 2003.
However, when we performed the upgrade, the same MAC client could download mail message headers from Exchange 2007, but on accessing body content 90% of the time the client would just hang and time out with the message:
The message from User <E-MAIL ADRESS> concerning <SUBJECT> has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.
The MAC MAIL 2.1.1 client was configured to access Exchange via IMAP.
On further investigation, Microsoft KB article 934259 appears to identify the cause of the problems with IMAP4 support. Although it doesn't specifically mention MAC Mail 2.1.1 by name as a problem client, it appears to be the same issue. Azaleos has also opened up SRX070620601521 with Microsoft Product Support to track this issue down and gain resolution. I'm hoping for a patch from Microsoft to be released soon! (hint hint).
In parallel we also opened case #79993164 with Apple support. They claim to be unaware of the issue at present and have escalated the issue to engineering.
We looked at your recommended configuration and it doesn't fix the issue in our customer. In that customer, we're running our Exchange 2007 Appliance with all primary roles (Mailbox, Hub Transport, Client Access) on a single server, and have removed all Exchange 2003 servers from the environment.
I hope this helps!
- well, the good news is that we're pretty confident that this is indeed the issue. The KB does not state this, but there will be a hotfix released (we're hoping that this is within the next month or so)I will post back more information when I get a firm date as to whether this is specifically affecting the mail.app client as well as the specific release date
- an additional place where there may be some issues:since mail.app is apparently making webdav calls, for the owa url, in Exchange 2007 it will need to be entered in as:http://cas.mycompany.com/exchange
not:
http://cas.mycompany.com/owa
Joey,
We’ve done some further investigation on this issue and although we think that the KB article above related to IMAP4 support may be part of the issue, the use of WebDAV by MAIL 2.1.1 might indeed be a key part of the issue.
Our current theory is:
1) Mail 2.1.1 looks at the field in the Account tab called Outlook Web Access Server – say “mail.myserver.com”
a. NOTE: if you add https:// or /exchange to this field it appears to gets truncated within the Account profile so that I believe that invalidates the last posting.
2) Mail 2.1.1 appends /exchange to “mail.myserver.com”
3) When downloading headers, Mail 2.1.1 does a webdav call to https://mail.myserver.com/exchange to get the list of headers and to populate the local MAIL 2.1.1 client cache
4) MAIL 2.1.1 may or may not use this same approach to pull body content
5) If either (3) or (4) above fails and times out, Mail 2.1.1 defaults to accessing the mail via IMAP4
If one of the following occurs:
a) the Outlook Web Access Server field does not map into the actual OWA frontend server (mail.myserver.com)
b) the certificate on the OWA server is not created for the right hostname (eg. mail.myserver.com)
c) the certificate used by OWA not signed by one of the standard certificate authorities (eg. Verisign, Thawte)
then the WebDAV call fails and eventually MAIL 2.1.1 times out, causing these performance issues.
Any thoughts on this analysis?
Keith McCall
I am most curious about b and c - what type of cert are you using? I take it you are not using the self-signed certificate?
c. is causing major headaches for customers
Its difficult for us to isolate what is happening as we are not generally testing mail.app against exchange when it is set up to use webdav.
Does everything work fine when you set it up as an imap client? better yet, as a pop client?
Joey
- wondering if this issue is still hot for everyone?
- My university just switched to Exchange Server 2007 (from a non-Exchange server). I experience this issue with Mail.app, both via IMAP and Exchange. A friend successfully uses POP with Mail.app, but I would rather not switch to POP.
I can use Entourage 2004. It is reliable, but clunky and slow, both on PPC and Intel machines. So I'm using Thunderbird successfully. But I'd rather be using Mail.app. I hope the Hotfix will be released soon! I'm very interested in a fix for this issue. I work for a non-profit organization with a very small budget so purchasing software as a work around is going to be very difficult for us.
- Yes this is still a hot issue. I have been trying to get mail to work with exchange 2007 with no luck. I get the same "cannot download message error" mentioned up the list.
Apple had a solution to fix this very issue, which is to rebuild you mail box. I went through the process and was able to at least see all of my viewed email, but when I had new email come in It gave me the error again.
I hope a fix comes out soon. I have since moved back to exchange 2003. Sorry, Joey, I've been up at an Azaleos Exchange seminar in Vancouver, BC.
Yes this is still an issue but it's been on the backburner as we've been waiting for your rollup with the hopes that it will fix the IMAP issues...
Mail.app with the IMAP4 configuration is just as slow as Mail.app with the Exchange client configuration.
This looks to be an IMAP issue rather than a Mail.app using the Exchange client configuration issue.
Thanks,
Keith
Interesting -
Although, the KB does specifically call out that we have identified this to be a problem with "some" imap clients -
I will check in today to see the status of the rollup. It should be coming soon (fingers-crossed!)
WOOHOO Exchange 2007 Security Rollup 3 Fixed it. We got it at 11:30 Last Night and All of our IMAP issues we have found have been resolved!!!
KB935999
http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=935999
- Is there any word on the status of this getting patched up in producion? This bug is really starting to drive me a bit crazy. I'm running the SP1 beta on my Exchange 2007 box and it is not patched up there yet either.Miles
Miles ---
We applied Exchange 2007 rollup 3 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935999) which addressed much (but not all) of the performance issues related to MAC Mail access to Exchange 2007. This is running in production at several Azaleos customers now.
Have you tried rollup 3 yet?
Keith McCall
CTO, Azaleos Corporation
- Ok so I am a student that is using mail.app and since my school has just switched to Exchange 2007 I have not been able to use my IMAP account in mail.app for my school e mail.Are you saying with this fix I should be able to access my e mail account as usual?And if so does my school need to upload this fix on the server in order for students to access there accounts via IMAP for mail.app?
- Yes, after my school installed Rollup 3 on our servers, I was able to use Mail.app again. Mail.app has been working fine for me ever since.
However, there was a fix in Rollup 2 which Microsoft forgot to include in Rollup 3. So our Exchange Servers started crashing a lot. It had something to do with too many Entourage users. Microsoft came up with a new patch for my school, which seems to have fixed the problem. I don't know if this new patch is publicly available yet or what it will be called. I am new in this.
I have a Mac running OS 10.3.9. My institution used to run Microsoft Exchange and upgraded to 2003 (not 2007). In the past I was able to use Mac Mail 1.3.11 (v622/624) to retrieve and send email. Since the change I lost the ability to receive mail but I was able to send and a couple of months later I was not able to send email as well.
The only way to get my email is by either go through the internet in the cyberspace as if I try to get it from home. Doing that ofcourse I lose all the good advantages of using Mail (lists etc)
The IT department are all PC people and can not solve this problem. In addition they do not "support" Mac. They say that the problem is that the Mail can not "resolve" our server. Is there a way to adjust my Mail to resolve my server etc and receive and send emails? As said above, I am not a computer expert, so, I may need explicit instructions.
Thanks
George
George,
Have a look at the following blog posting. Hopefully this will help you out.
Configuring MAC Mail.App for Microsoft Exchange
http://www.azaleos.com/blog/index.php?q=node/45
Keith McCall
CTO & Founder
Azaleos Corporation
- I hope that all I have read here will enable us to resolve our offices problems with email and Exchange 2007.
I am not sure if should not be a new thread but is related. We also have on our server public folders which when opened in Outlook on a PC open either a calendar or a contacts list. Is there any way this information can be accessed on a Mac? Folks,
Azaleos has now spent 6 months working with Microsoft on this issue.
The diagnosis appears to be that significant changes were made to the IMAP protocol implementation in Exchange 2007 that significantly deteriorates the performance of MAC Mail.App clients, especially client with large mailboxes, against Exchange 2007 vs. Exchange 2003.
Although the Microsoft support team's response has been absolutely exemplary, we have been unable to make the Exchange development team understand the significance of this takeback from Exchange 2003, nor been able to have them implement fixes in the Exchange 2007 stack to address the issue.
More significantly, we have also received absolutely no response from Apple regarding the deficiencies of the MAC Mail.App client, nor even any acknowledgement of the problem. In fact, from the complete lack of response we've received, Apple has an absolutely abysmal Enterprise support capability and far worse than anything we've experienced from Microsoft.
At this time, Azaleos does not recommend that customers who have significant MAC Mail.App implementations with sizeable mailboxes (in excess of 500MB mailboxes) upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.
We are recommending to customers that they do upgrade to Exchange 2007. But, that any users of MAC Mail.App move immediately to Entourage or to an e-mail client that implements a solution that is less than 10 years out of date.
Thanks,
Keith McCall
CTO, Azaleos Corporation
We have a small but very loud crowd of Mac users that claim to love mail.app but yet there's not real group calendar integration with any other application and they still have issues with the mail.app application itself.
When you say "a solution that is less than 10 years out of date", what do you mean?
Though not perfect, we're running rollup 4 right now and will get rollup 5 by next weekend, most of our mail.app users are functioning though with many support calls.- after changing the tcpip parameters the bodys came in. i don´t no why, but it works.[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]"EnableTCPChimney"=dword:00000000
As a reference to others dealing with IMAP and Exchange 2007.
If IMAP is essential to your company, don't use Exchange 2007. I have had lots of problems with its implementation of the protocol, and in my opinion it is lacking so much, that you should think twice if you plan on using IMAP at all. Just try migrating accounts from one IMAP system to Exchange 2007. Good luck, because you will experience disconnect upon disconnect for no good reason.
Check imapsync out as a migration tool, which works _very_ well unless Exchange 2007 is involved. If you want it to work with Exchange 2007, you'll need to start hacking excessive reconnect code into imapsync to get it to work most of the time. But if you are working with more than nine folders on the non-Exchange system, you can forget it. It isn't going to work. Check
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3541475&SiteID=17
out if you want to read more about another's problems with that...
IMAP + Exchange2007 = broken
Just my painful experience with it...
