ExQuilla alternatives for connecting to MS Exchange Server?

Question

I installed ExQuilla according to this tutorial After Installation: Creating an Exchange account. For accessing Microsoft Exchange Account.

And I accessed my MS mail without any trouble:

Thunderbird looking

But this soft is not free. And license will be over 2 weeks.

Which free alternatives are possible for the same purpose?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

10

If you have web services enabled on the exchange server, then Davmail will do the trick: http://davmail.sourceforge.net

Here's how to set up :

Once davmail is installed, go ahead and run it.

Right-click the tray icon
Go to Settings→General and enter your OWA exchange URL (ask your IT for this URL, or whoever set up exchange).
You can leave the rest of the settings as default if you wish- But do take note of the Local IMAP port (it defaulted to 1143 for me) as well as the SMTP port (it defaulted to 1025 for me).
Now, open up thunderbird and add an account.
Enter your email/password as normal and hit continue. It will try to connect and fail, but go ahead and click Manual Config.
Change the incoming server to localhost and the port to 1143.
Change the outgoing server to localhost and the port to 1025. Use your existing exchange email/password.

Voila.

Keep in mind davmail does not automatically start after reboot, so you will need to make sure it starts before trying to connect with thunderbird.

To explain what davmail is doing:

Davmail is acting as a man-in-the-middle to your exchange server, relaying info to and from: thunderbird <-> davmail <-> exchange. Thunderbird just connects to Davmail (which is running on your localhost) and davmail connects to your exchange server.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Oct 01 '15 at 18:55

Jeff Lenz

116
2
4

2

Although your answer is 100% correct, it is also difficult for a beginning user to install it... **:-(** Therefore, please [edit] your answer, and add the relevant steps to install this into your answer, thereby guaranteeing your answer for 100% of the lifetime of this site! **;-)** You can always leave the link in at the bottom of your answer as a source for your material... – Fabby Oct 01 '15 at 21:51
@Fabby, their website has very good instructions with screenshots, etc... – Jeff Lenz Oct 06 '15 at 17:39
There you go! **:-)** An edit *and* an upvote! **;-)** Much better then [the original](http://askubuntu.com/revisions/680557/1) – Fabby Oct 06 '15 at 19:09
If you have a lot of trouble adding an account, like I did, consider adding a plugin to Thunderbird called "Add account manually" : https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/index-en.html#addmanual. Add your account and make sure your output server is also set to localhost (it will sometimes still be set differently, even though you set it to localhost the first time). Then it will still fail to connect to fetch mail (but work for sending mail), and shows a message on the lower left saying "null", just restart Thunderbird and it should start working. – Joao Carlos Apr 26 '16 at 09:50
While I was trying all of this, I also got "locked out" of my account and had to ask an admin to un-lock my exchange account. If you are having a lot of trouble logging in, it might not be a configuration problem, just your account that got locked out. Happy exchanging! – Joao Carlos Apr 26 '16 at 09:51

guderkar · Answer 2 · 2017-03-03T00:17:24.417

6

Ok my first answer was deleted so I will try to be more specific.

MExInt is a Thunderbird add-on that can download e-mail messages and send e-mail messages via EWS.

You can download it here: https://github.com/guderkar/MExInt/tree/master/xpi

You can examine the code here: https://github.com/guderkar/MExInt

How to use it:

Install the add-on from the .xpi file
Go to Account Settings -> Account Actions and select Add Microsoft Exchange Account
Fill the account information - You will need Exchange username or e-mail, password and URL to Exchange Web Services
Click Add Account
To download messages right click on account in Thunderbird account pane and select Get Mesasges
To send message use standard way

edited Mar 03 '17 at 00:17

answered Feb 27 '17 at 17:01

guderkar

61
1
3

this addon seems to be corrupted, I cannot install it – vladkras Dec 02 '19 at 08:53
Looks abandoned - last update 3 years ago... – Hubbitus Jul 04 '22 at 09:45

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 15 '19 at 16:49

I was using Exquilla...but once it became paid, I looked elsewhere. Mostly because we are moving from a hosted 2010 EXCH to 365, and once the migration is completed, I shouldn't need that plugin.

I switched to the DavMail solution, and it worked flawlessly. I wanted to avoid the popup and tray icon, so I tried the server install. This created problems for me because the davmail.properties file was also created in /home/USER/.davmail.properties. Once I removed the duplicate file, I could check email, but it would not send. Doh, I had my outgoing port at 25,not 1025. With that simple fix it worked perfectly. I'm using Mint and followed these instructions: http://davmail.sourceforge.net/serversetup.html

Eric Duminil · Answer 4 · 2020-05-11T21:53:39.050

You might be interested in BlueMail.

It's not a Thunberbird Add-on but it might be worth mentioning since it's available on many platforms, it's free (as in free beer), easy to install and supports Exchange via ActiveSync or EWS.

# Make sure snapd is installed :
sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
# Install Bluemail :
sudo snap install bluemail

For the ActiveSync URL, I simply used the OWA URL without https:// or /owa. So someexchangeserver.com instead of https://someexchangeserver.com/owa/.

PS : I'm not affiliated to BlueMail, just pleasantly surprised by the ease of use.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 05 '18 at 04:35

0

Exquilla is free, without cost and with modification freedom since March 2018, so now you can just use it.

For me, it works much better than davmail.

It just installs and works in Thunderbird 60, or you can get free licences from site for Thunderbird 52-60.

answered Sep 05 '18 at 04:35

Andrey Regentov

123
6

9

Well, it's [not free anymore](https://www.exquilla.com/#purchase). – jirislav Jul 17 '19 at 06:13
@jirislav Is there an alternative? – Malachi Jul 17 '19 at 12:25
@jirislav Or perhaps the instructions from this site: https://oit.colorado.edu/tutorial/office-365-thunderbird-exchange-configuration or is that not correct either? – Malachi Jul 17 '19 at 12:31
@Malachi if you can access you email in ways other than ms exchange's EWS protocol (IMAP/SMTP) then instructions are correct. But there are cases when mail is accessible through EWS only - then you cannot use that instructions. – Andrey Regentov Jul 17 '19 at 17:14
Due to addon policy changes, this answer became incorrect. – CristiFati Jun 29 '20 at 18:25

ExQuilla alternatives for connecting to MS Exchange Server?

5 Answers5

Voila.

How to use it: