There are different ways to open and read your mail. You can use web-mail, where you read your mail on a web page belonging to the website of your provider or of a third party, you can use an e-mail program such as Thunderbird, Evolution or one of many others. With an e-mail program you can sometimes choose between POP and IMAP. Sometimes, however, using one of these possibilities is not enough. There are other ways – like, for example, the Microsoft (who else?) Exchange server using OWA (Outlook Web Access). This is used just by Microsoft because well, let's be gentle, they want to be different.

Il y a différentes manières d'ouvrir et de lire vos courriels. Vous pouvez utiliser web-mail, où vous lisez vos courriels sur une page web sur le site internet de votre fournisseur ou d'une tierce partie, vous pouvez utiliser un client e-mail comme Thunderbird, Evolution ou un parmi de nombreux autres. Avec un client e-mail, vous pouvez choisir en POP et IMAP.

Cependant, parfois, utiliser un de ces choix n'est pas suffisant. Il y a d'autres manières - comme, par exemple, le serveur Microsoft Exchange (qui d'autre ?) qui utilise OWA (Outlook Web Access). Qui est utilisé uniquement par Microsoft parce que, soyons gentils, ils veulent être différents.

For those who use Evolution as an E-mail program, there is good news. Evolution has the Evolution Exchange Connector, which can be installed from the standard repositories. For Thunderbird, and many other programs, there is not such an easy way to connect to an Exchange server. Happily there is DavMail. The latest version (since 2012-07-10) is 3.9.9. For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint they have a deb-file present on http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ where you can get more info about the program, and where you can download it.

Pour ceux qui utilisent le client e-mail Evolution, il y a de bonnes nouvelles. Evolution possède un connecteur Exchange, qui peut s'installer à partir du dépôt standard. Pour Thunderbird, et beaucoup d'autres programmes, il n'y a pas de manière aussi simple pour se connecter à un serveur Exchange.

Heureusement, Davmail existe. La dernière version (au 10/07/2012) est la 3.9.9. Ils ont un fichier deb pour Debian/Ubuntu/Mint sur http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ où vous trouverez plus d'informations sur ce programme, et où vous pouvez le télécharger.

After installation, you start the program and you are greeted by settings windows (below). In here, there are just a few things which you need to set up.

In the Main Tab, the only item is the OWA URL. I have my address hidden to prevent troubles. What you can still see is the extension /exchange/

For the server I use, this is mandatory; no idea if this applies with other Exchange servers, probably the same.

On the last tab, called Advanced, there is also just one setting which is important (below) it's the one next to the mouse pointer in the screenshot. Untick this box otherwise you will end up with double mail messages in your sent items folder.

I did not change any other setting and it works great.

In your mail program (and I use Thunderbird, but I guess settings like these are very common), I had to set up the connection like this: When setting up the account, you start by choosing an IMAP Mail server. The name is called localhost. Here, you do not enter the real name of the mail server. This is done in DavMail.

The two are connected through port 1143. When you look at the 1st DavMail screenshot, you also see port 1143 used for IMAP mail. The numbers used here are 1000 larger than the real numbers( 1143 -143, 1025 – 25, 1110 – 110).

As User Name, I had to use domain\username but this is something your local IT guy can tell you. For the company I work for I have to do it like this.

Setup a new SMTP server with the settings shown below.

Also here you see the changed port number (1025) and also here I had to use the format domain\username in the User Name field.

That's it. When you have set up DavMail this way (and added an account in, for example, Thunderbird – like I explained), you should be seeing your company's mail in a few seconds.

Question remains: do you want to see these mail messages at home? That's something you have to answer for yourself.

To make sure DavMail is always running when you need it, add it to the list of programs which start when the system boots.