Living in a Microsoft Outlook world
I've found myself recently at a new job being one of the few Mac people in a Windows world. The only real problem I've encountered is my new e-mail is a pain. From what I gather everyone else uses MS Outlook.
I can check my e-mail at work using Mail, but not at home. So I've tried accessing WebMail. The company server is down about 60% of the time, but they're migrating to a new server that runs something called Microsoft Outlook Web Access provided by Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. However, I can't log on with my password and user name. Tried Safari and Firefox. Off course this sounds like I should call our IT help, but they say they can't help me because they don't know anything about Macs. Any ideas out there?
While i'm at it. Any idea why HTML formatted e-mail should get unformatted (text and hyperlinks) on my company e-mail and not on any other e-mail address I use? (I have four e-mails addresses all managedwith Mail)
I can check my e-mail at work using Mail, but not at home. So I've tried accessing WebMail. The company server is down about 60% of the time, but they're migrating to a new server that runs something called Microsoft Outlook Web Access provided by Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. However, I can't log on with my password and user name. Tried Safari and Firefox. Off course this sounds like I should call our IT help, but they say they can't help me because they don't know anything about Macs. Any ideas out there?
While i'm at it. Any idea why HTML formatted e-mail should get unformatted (text and hyperlinks) on my company e-mail and not on any other e-mail address I use? (I have four e-mails addresses all managedwith Mail)
Comments
Off course this sounds like I should call our IT help, but they say they can't help me because they don't know anything about Macs.
Did I ever mention I don't like "IT" people? This is why. It's not a matter of knowing about Macs, it's a matter of knowing about TCP/IP and standard Web protocols.
Of course, once you get MS talking to MS, there is all kinds of proprietary shit that can get in the way. One thing that got me once was the MS Proxy Server.
Here is what I would do, unless someone here uses Exchange and knows how to get around the MS proprietary protocols:
go to http://www.macwindows.com and check out the info there.
Also, ask your IT guys why Firefox won't log in to a web mail - web is web. Does it reject the password? Or is it doing a browser sniff and rejecting all Macs? If that is the case, have Safari pretend to be MS IE 6. You have to enable the Debug menu to get to the User Agent item.
To install the Debug menu in Safari, go to Terminal and enter
defaults write com.apple.safari includeDebugMenu 1
Then quit and relaunch Safari and try different user agents from the User Agent menu of the Debug menu.
I did mention to IT that the whole point of web access is to make it platform agnostic. They kindly agreed but....no clue.
This way I have instant access to e-mail in Entourage whether on the corporate network (a little slower in updating, but nothing problematic) and on the road.
NICE.
Originally posted by Sport73
My company uses OWA on Exchange 2003 and I have no problems loggin in using Safari. Of course, I don't even bother to do that much anymore since I have configured ENTOURAGE to always connect using the https://(companyserver).com/exchange/ address.
This way I have instant access to e-mail in Entourage whether on the corporate network (a little slower in updating, but nothing problematic) and on the road.
NICE.
Thanks, good to know it should work. I've been avoiding Entourage becuase i generally like the benefits of using the Apple apps, but maybe I'll have to look into using it afterall.
I use Entourage (old version that came with Office X) for email access when I work remotely on my Mac. Entourage is OK, not as good as Windows' Outlook client but much better than OWA. On my Entourage setup, I can't access my company address book, but Entourage does remember any email address I've sent/received mail from, so over time it is adequate if you email the same people regularly.
The biggest Entourage failing on the Mac (at least in my version) is that it can't handle Outlook calendar items properly. If I need to use Outlook to schedule a meeting, I'm hosed. It *seems* to work OK, but recipients of meeting invitations get a non-functional weird-looking message that is useless.
As far as mail formatting, Outlook often sends email in its own format, which looks fine in the Outlook world but doesn't format right when viewed with other clients like Mail or Mozilla's mail client. In particular, URLs often appear twice, which is confusing.
If I were dealing with a lot of critical Exchange email and calendaring from my Mac, I'd seriously consider buying an Intel Mac and running Outlook (or even all of Office) under Parallels or Boot Camp.