SSD + Old Laptop + XUbuntu = New Laptop - Evolution supports Exchange 2007 and 2010
So I recently purchased a 120GB solid state drive (SSD) for a 6 year old laptop (Samsung Q45, 2GB, Centrino CPU) I had lying around.
First off, I had a problem with the SATA cable after disconnecting the old drive which by design is stuck to the original 250GB hard drive in the laptop. Due to the age of the laptop this tore upon attempting to disconnect the old drive. This was easily fixed, by ordering a replacement cable off eBay for under $10 (Part BA41-00725A for anyone with a Samsung Q45 and ripped SATA cable).
Once I sorted out the SATA cable and installed the SSD, I reloaded my laptop with Xubuntu. Xubuntu is an excellent build of Ubuntu for a easy transition for users of Windows as it has all the basic tools you are use to in Windows with the ease of Ubuntu (apt-get) for the ones you're missing - dropbox, skype etc. You can also use wine to install spotify and many other Windows only applications.
After the OS reload on the SSD everything was lighting quick, and I now had a very usable netbook with all the common desktop tools.
The only service I was not able to access via my new Xubuntu desktop application was my work e-mails which are served on an Exchange 2010 server. This was a big problem for me as I tend to work from multiple laptops (mix of Windows, and more recently Xubuntu and Mint). I go for the quantity (with SSD), not quality approach - let's face it, a $2-3k laptop today is worth nothing in a year or two. This allows me to have a few laptops ready to go at any one time - Dropbox is a massive contributor to this way of working for me. Of course you can use Outlook Web Access, however we all know it's not quite the same as using an e-mail desktop client, especially for off line e-mail access.
I then started hunting around for a good Ubuntu e-mail client, and whilst Thunderbird seems to be the most popular the support for Exchange (natively) is not there. This lead me toward Evolution(3.6.4). Thanks to Ubuntu, this was easily installed - sudo apt-get install evolution
Once Evolution was installed I opened it up and attempted to add an Exchange account. Unfortunately out of the box Evolution does not support Exchange and only has options for IMAP, IMAP+, POP3 and a few other less common Unix systems. After some Googling I came across an article on Loginroot. The Loginroot article explains that to use Exchange 2007/2010 from Evolution you need to install evolution-ews which is a small addon to Evolution. As you guessed this is installed via sudo apt-get install evolution-ews
After installing the evolution-ews add-on, I reopened Evolution and went through the process of adding the account - Selecting Exchange Web Services. For this to work the Exchange server you are connecting to needs to have OWA (Webmail) enabled. The server URL is populated based on the initial email domain you put on the first page.. just check that the FQDN matches your company or employers OWA server - e.g. https://mail.omni.com.au. OAB by default, should be the FQDN followed by /OAB e.g. https://mail.omni.com.au/OAB
Once completing the EWS wizard in Evolution, I clicked Finish and there was no Exchange Web Services account in the account list. It's like there was a problem with Evolution seeing the recently added account. I tried several times more and after clicking Finish each time, nothing.
Back to Google, I then came across this Bug at Launchpad which describes the exact same issue - Cannot add EWS or MAPI account to Evolution. The fix, restart your PC after installing Evolution and Evolution-EWS.
Once restarted, all 6-7 attempts of adding the EWS account appeared in Evolution. To clean these up, in Evolution click Edit/Preferences and remove the duplicate accounts.
So that's it. Evolution does support Exchange 2010 with Address Book, Calendar - all you need is to install evolution and evolution-ews and reboot your PC
Whilst I have not used or tested it. I understand Evolution supports Exchange 2000/2003 as well using the plugin evolution-mapi
First off, I had a problem with the SATA cable after disconnecting the old drive which by design is stuck to the original 250GB hard drive in the laptop. Due to the age of the laptop this tore upon attempting to disconnect the old drive. This was easily fixed, by ordering a replacement cable off eBay for under $10 (Part BA41-00725A for anyone with a Samsung Q45 and ripped SATA cable).
Once I sorted out the SATA cable and installed the SSD, I reloaded my laptop with Xubuntu. Xubuntu is an excellent build of Ubuntu for a easy transition for users of Windows as it has all the basic tools you are use to in Windows with the ease of Ubuntu (apt-get) for the ones you're missing - dropbox, skype etc. You can also use wine to install spotify and many other Windows only applications.
After the OS reload on the SSD everything was lighting quick, and I now had a very usable netbook with all the common desktop tools.
The only service I was not able to access via my new Xubuntu desktop application was my work e-mails which are served on an Exchange 2010 server. This was a big problem for me as I tend to work from multiple laptops (mix of Windows, and more recently Xubuntu and Mint). I go for the quantity (with SSD), not quality approach - let's face it, a $2-3k laptop today is worth nothing in a year or two. This allows me to have a few laptops ready to go at any one time - Dropbox is a massive contributor to this way of working for me. Of course you can use Outlook Web Access, however we all know it's not quite the same as using an e-mail desktop client, especially for off line e-mail access.
I then started hunting around for a good Ubuntu e-mail client, and whilst Thunderbird seems to be the most popular the support for Exchange (natively) is not there. This lead me toward Evolution(3.6.4). Thanks to Ubuntu, this was easily installed - sudo apt-get install evolution
Once Evolution was installed I opened it up and attempted to add an Exchange account. Unfortunately out of the box Evolution does not support Exchange and only has options for IMAP, IMAP+, POP3 and a few other less common Unix systems. After some Googling I came across an article on Loginroot. The Loginroot article explains that to use Exchange 2007/2010 from Evolution you need to install evolution-ews which is a small addon to Evolution. As you guessed this is installed via sudo apt-get install evolution-ews
After installing the evolution-ews add-on, I reopened Evolution and went through the process of adding the account - Selecting Exchange Web Services. For this to work the Exchange server you are connecting to needs to have OWA (Webmail) enabled. The server URL is populated based on the initial email domain you put on the first page.. just check that the FQDN matches your company or employers OWA server - e.g. https://mail.omni.com.au. OAB by default, should be the FQDN followed by /OAB e.g. https://mail.omni.com.au/OAB
Once completing the EWS wizard in Evolution, I clicked Finish and there was no Exchange Web Services account in the account list. It's like there was a problem with Evolution seeing the recently added account. I tried several times more and after clicking Finish each time, nothing.
Back to Google, I then came across this Bug at Launchpad which describes the exact same issue - Cannot add EWS or MAPI account to Evolution. The fix, restart your PC after installing Evolution and Evolution-EWS.
Once restarted, all 6-7 attempts of adding the EWS account appeared in Evolution. To clean these up, in Evolution click Edit/Preferences and remove the duplicate accounts.
So that's it. Evolution does support Exchange 2010 with Address Book, Calendar - all you need is to install evolution and evolution-ews and reboot your PC
Whilst I have not used or tested it. I understand Evolution supports Exchange 2000/2003 as well using the plugin evolution-mapi
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