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<p><font face="Yu Gothic UI">If you would like to read your email on
a </font><font face="Yu Gothic UI"><font face="Yu Gothic UI">Microsoft
Exchange server account using </font>Thunderbird, there are a
currently 2 main possibilities:</font></p>
<ul>
<li><font face="Yu Gothic UI">If the Exchange server has IMAP
enabled, you can connect via IMAP, after manually setting up
the account</font></li>
<li><font face="Yu Gothic UI">ExQuilla, a Thunderbird addon, uses
the EWS propietary protocol of Exchange.</font></li>
</ul>
<p><font face="Yu Gothic UI">However, for a large number of
corporate Exchange servers of large companies, these 2 protocols
are not enabled towards the Internet. Oftentimes, only Outlook
Web Access (OWA), the webmail frontend of Exchange, is enabled.
This rules out both options above and leaves you without access
in Thunderbird.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Yu Gothic UI">There are some other protocols that
Exchange supports, e.g. the native Microsoft Outlook application
protocol, or ActiveSync, but none of these have an
implementation in Thunderbird.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Yu Gothic UI">So, with my company, we have been
developing a Thunderbird addon that uses the OWA protocol to
connect to Exchange servers. This should allow to read and write
email in Thunderbird with your Exchange account that has OWA
enabled. The name of the new extension is Owl.</font><br>
</p>
<p><font face="Yu Gothic UI">We are currently in the early alpha
stages, where we test internally and fix bugs. We should be
going into beta soon. We are currently fixing bugs and other
roadblocks in Thunderbid to make this happen and working with
Thunderbird developers to integrate these patches.</font></p>
<p><font face="Yu Gothic UI">Ben Bucksch<br>
Beonex<br>
</font></p>
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