Exchange 2003 with evolution

You may be able to run MSOffice in wine. Evolution hates non-MS clients so if the workplace productivity is ingrained with Exchange then you may be stuck. Ubuntu isn't always the answer.

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=31

Yes i tried to run Outlook 2003 with Wine 1.2 (ubuntu-wine PPA) in lucid, install was ok, Outlook 2003 running but impossible to configure a Exchange account (he cannot find exchange mailbox ?).. and i'm sure with the parameters because the procedure work in xp..

So i still blocked... i personally and professionally use linux from 11 years, Ubuntu from 3 years and there is a really great progress in a short period, but it still missing some essentials things (in this case with exchange). I know that my problem is not a Ubuntu defect but a "Evolution" (gnome or novell) problem, and i don't really understand why they don't put a higher priority on that thing (evolution-exchange, evolution-mapi) because with my experience i saw that this is the biggest problem and blocker in a company that want migrate to linux (if they use exchange)..

I hope that evolution 2.32, will fix some missing things with exchange..

Thanks,
Michael

Maybe Exchange should accept Evolution clients ;)

You could pressure Microsoft to support 3rd party clients.

So i found a good solution to connect evolution / thunderbird client to Microsoft Exchange 2003.

I tried DavMail (davmail.sourceforge.net) and install it on my Ubuntu test computer (you can install locally or install it on a server).
All that i needed seems to work (email, calendar, contact). i have to test it in the next days..

First i wanted to use Evolution with DavMail but it fail when retrieving email because the Exchange mail box was big (~15000 mail, ~2Go) and Evolution crashed with a timeout.. :o( (it work with a lighter mail box)

So i decide to switch to Thunderbird with lightning extension for the calendar.. and is ok until now :o)

I've been using (tolerating) Evolution for years to access an Exchange server, and although it's mostly feature-complete, it's always been incredibly buggy. I have an icon in my Panel to run 'evolution --force-shutdown'. Here are the problems I've always had:

- Often loses the connection to the exchange backend process.
- It has some sort of task infrastructure that is flaky.. it shows you its current tasks in the status bar, each with a red 'X' to cancel them. Doing this is perilous, and often results in you having to restart evolution to get things working again.
- The "Refreshing folder" and "Checking for new mail" tasks take a very long time. And I'm even careful to not keep my inbox too large. I'm not discounting the possibility of this being partly a server-side problem, but using our Exchange Web interface is really snappy.
- Creating appointments (and inviting people to them) almost never works, to the point where I don't even try it anymore. I use the server's web interface for that now, which is many clicks away.
- Using the address auto-complete feature with addresses in the Global Address List often freezes Evolution for ~30 seconds, sometimes indefinitely. Sometimes it renders the mouse cursor unusable in X entirely, requiring me to kill Evolution to get it back.