Outlook – I can access the company mail on iPhone, but not on a PC/Mac

emailexchangeiphonemicrosoft-outlook

On my iPhone (4), I can set up my company e-mail, which allows me to receive and send e-mail and use the calender to manage appointments. The company is using Exchange 2003.

The problem is that this is the only way I can access my e-mail when I'm not at the office. I've tried setting up an account on Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010, Outlook 2011 (Mac) and the OSX Mail app, but it doesn't work. The server cannot be reached, even though I've used the exact same settings as on the iPhone.

The info I use on the iPhone is:

  • Server name of the company mail server (it's the same as for webmail)
  • Use SSL
  • AD Domain of my account
  • My AD account name
  • Password

When I enter this on the iPhone, it works like a charm, but whatever I try on one of my desktops, it doesn't work.

FYI: I can't ask the company IT guys because according to them, it doesn't work from a remote location, not even on the iPhone (but obviously, that works just fine)

Best Answer

Mail.app does not use activesync, it uses ews (check in your account settings) ews means exchange web services, this is quite separate from the activesync provider that the iphone uses. I find it confusing that apple can release activesync capabilities on the iphone and not the mail.app on osx (i have 10.6.4).

This has bugged me for ages! At our company i am the only external user who has a mac, so the problem has only appeared since i started. The owa virtual directory and the activesync api has been exposed through the firewall with certificate translation but the /ews hasn't been.

Long story short, i can access exchange from mail.app and entourage when i am in the office and via VPN but not externally.

The way to make mail.app work with ews is to get the network guys to expose the /ews virtual directory to the firewall and use ssl mapping so that the external requests use the external SSL cert.

E.g. Internal config - exchangeServer.local/ews uses the normal certificate or no cert (if possible) External config - exchange.mydomain.com/ews uses TMG or ISA to present the certificate for that address and transports the ssl-encrypted comunication to the exchange server.

Its as much work as getting owa to work, in fact its the same setup, just with a different virtual folder.

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