Filed under: Enterprise, First Look, Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard and Microsoft Exchange first impressions
One of the things touted in this latest incarnation of Mac OSX was its ability to work with Microsoft Exchange using Apple's Mail, Address Book and iCal applications. Well, I'm happy to report that Snow Leopard does, in fact, work pretty well with Exchange 2007. Granted, this is only after limited testing, and it doesn't, as yet, work as well as Outlook for Windows, but it is a step in the right direction. One thing to consider before we go on is the fact that Snow Leopard will only play nicely with Exchange 2007 so if you don't have it or are not planning on having it, these new Exchange features in Snow Leopard won't work for you. You'll have the same access to Exchange 2003 from Mail (via IMAP) and Address Book that you did under Leopard.
That said, these new features of Snow Leopard offer a nice alternative to using the previous version of Entourage or the new Web Services Edition. Fortunately, if you are running Snow Leopard and Exchange 2007, setup could not be easier. All you need to do is launch Apple's Mail and select "Preferences" from the "Mail" menu.
Read on for more...
Once that new window opens, simple click on the "Accounts" button and then click on the "+" sign to create a new email account. Once the screen to create a new account appears, simply type in the email address for your Exchange 2007 account and the password. Once that's done, Mail will autodiscover the correct Exchange information (provided your Exchange 2007 server is set up properly for this) and populate the correct information automatically.
During this process you will also be prompted to include Address Book and iCal sync. Allowing this will create a new account in both your Address Book and in iCal which will contain your Exchange information. This new account will show up in the left column of both Address Book and iCal as your Exchange account. This will also allow you to use the Exchange Global Address List as well as your own personal contacts when sending email in Mail.
In addition, you can set events, meetings, appointments, etc. in iCal and invite other users in your organization to attend them. They can then, in turn, respond and confirm or deny attendance or suggest an alternative time or date for the event. So far, this works pretty well, but I haven't had time to test it more thoroughly; I will update this article as I do.
These new features in Snow Leopard are pretty cool and a welcome addition to OS X -- especially for those of us who need to work in a mixed environment. As I get more time to explore these new features of Snow Leopard and Exchange, I'm sure I'll find more things to like about the way they work together -- and probably a few things not to like as well. We've had a report from some early users who are having trouble sending any file attachments over 8 MB in size, and another report of spurious meeting change notifications when canceling recurring meetings; though I haven't experienced these particular issues, please do let us know if you are seeing them or other gotchas with Snow Leopard & Exchange.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
The Iron Giant said 3:04AM on 8-30-2009
You know, most of TUAW's readers are of the greenpeace/democratic persuasion. Nothing wrong with letting them know you work for Heal The Bay. :)
Thanks for the information on Exchange 2007 compatibility.
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josh said 3:18AM on 8-30-2009
I agree with the Iron Giant - you may have blurred your email address, but not in a way which makes it unreadable...
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momo said 4:05AM on 8-30-2009
How does it compare to using Exchange 2007 on Microsoft Entourage?
Any Exchange features missing from switching from Entourage to Mail+Addressbook+iCal ?
Thanks!
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K said 4:40AM on 8-30-2009
Been working flawlessly for 2 months now. I love it! Just need my work to set up external access...sigh.
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fellowweb said 4:25AM on 8-30-2009
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your great article! Exchange is for me the far most important new feature of Snow Leopard. Therefore, I have been eager to wait for Snow Leopard reviews focused on Exchange.
When you update the article with new insights, could you please do this in the form of a new blog post such as "Snow Leopard and Microsoft Exchange first impressions (part 2)"?
If not, I assume Google Reader won't be able to notify interested readers (such as me) in case of update.
Thank you and have fun enjoying Snow Leopard!
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Maxwell Ash said 4:38AM on 8-30-2009
Has anyone managed to get exchange to work with the google contacts and calendars exchange sync which I use on my iPhone. It would be very handy.
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KarlW said 5:15AM on 8-30-2009
No, it doesn't work with Google Sync. Perhaps its an Exchange 2005 issue, maybe its something Google have to enable.
ben said 5:15PM on 9-01-2009
The Google contact and calendar sync uses ActiveSync, the protocol Microsoft made up to get PDAs to communicate with the desktop. Snow Leopard adds support for Exchange Web Services, which is a completely different thing. There's no way to get the two working (FWIW, the Google sync also won't work with Outlook in Windows)
yvon_is said 7:26PM on 8-30-2009
Thank you for this information, it's great! I heard the snow leopard does not support iWorks or Photoshop? Please tell me that is just a silly rumor!
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ianm said 5:29AM on 8-30-2009
Incidentally, works just as well with Exchange 2010 RC
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ianm said 5:33AM on 8-30-2009
You can also define multiple Exchange accounts where you have accounts on more than one Exchange Server Org. Also within the same Exchange Org you can also define and open multiple mailboxes - and choose which one to send from. Pretty powerful stuff.
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Greg said 6:35AM on 8-30-2009
And as far as I know, this is not possible within Outlook for Windows.
In addition, remote access to the global adressbook works smoothly when it didn't work at all within Entourage.
I don't think I'll launch Entourage again..
Lukas said 6:49AM on 8-30-2009
I am actually wondering more about over the air support for calendar and address book for the iphone ..
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puhsitch said 9:25AM on 8-30-2009
If you mean in terms of syncing Exchange calendar and address book over the air, it works great!
ianm said 6:50AM on 8-30-2009
Not until recently, Outlook 2010 supports opening additional mailboxes
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trstack said 7:16AM on 8-30-2009
Everything works except contacts. I have over 450 contacts in Outlook and less than 300 got sync'd from Exchange. I deleted and setup the account twice, same story.
Access to the GAL, calendar, mail and tasks all works flawlessly but contacts/address book is not quite there yet.
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David B Turetsky said 7:49AM on 8-30-2009
Am I alone in that my organization still supports Ex2003 only?
Also, it would be more important to my company if I was able to join the domain. So, I will be reinstalling AdmitMac, once again. Thank you to Thursby for maintaining a very important IT-org-focused product.
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voodoogmr said 10:22AM on 8-30-2009
Nope. I'm in the same boat. My org refuses to update to 2007 since 2003 "works so well." Obviously, our IT department never experiences the constant connection failures the rest of the staff does.
Kurt said 11:45AM on 8-30-2009
Nope, I'm in the same boat. They're skipping Exchange 2007 for Exchange 2010, with a deployment schedule "sometime in 2012".
*sigh*
no name said 1:13PM on 8-30-2009
my work is not planning to upgrade. EVER.
we are stuck with 2003 due to insane pricing and budget cuts.