Help me get Entourage to play nice with my company's exchange server.

January 13, 2009 8:18 AM

I need help fixing a problem with email on my Macbook. I am trying to get Entourage to play nice with my office's exchange server.

I am running the latest version of Entourage on my Macbook (OSX Leopard).

I can get it to connect to my exchange server when I'm in the office by listing the exchange server as "fs1". With those settings, it doesn't connect when I am out of the office.

When I am out of the office, I have to change the exchange server setting to our exchange server address (our domain name, and then "/exchange". This setting does not work when I am in the office.

There are other problems - when I send an email from Entourage, it is not visible in Outlook back in the office (on my PC). Also, I'm not able to view our company's public contact lists on Entourage.

How can I set up Entourage to work both in and out of the office, and properly sync sent mail?

I am not against using Mac's Mail program or something else, if it will work better.

Thanks for any help.

posted by kdern to computers & internet (6 answers total)

fs1 is the netbios name of the server, its not an internet name. You want to use the FQDN for for this. A FQDN is like mail.yourcompany.com.

I have to change the exchange server setting to our exchange server address (our domain name, and then "/exchange". This setting does not work when I am in the office.

Entourage needs to be able to talk to the front end server for email, not the main exchange server, although there's a chance that these two server may be the same physical machine. In other words if the FQDN works outside but not inside you will need to contact your administrator for the proper settings.

when I send an email from Entourage, it is not visible in Outlook back in the office (on my PC).

I dont think youre connecting properly. For this functionality you should not be using pop or imap but the exchange connector. Its impossible for me to tell you what you server settings are, how your mac is configured, and how your exchange is configured. Again, contact your IT dept.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:31 AM on January 13, 2009

You're in for fun times:

1. Internally, Entourage can work with your Exchange server directly. Externally it uses OWA (Outlook Web Access) as its interface into the server. In order for your Entourage to work inside and outside the office with the same settings you need either a VPN connection to your office for when you are working externally, or you need OWA to resolve both outside and inside your office. The symptoms you've described lead me to believe you probably can't access OWA from inside your office. Alternatively, you can see if your company supports IMAP and use that instead. But that will certainly exacerbate the sent items syncing problem if you are going to continue to use Outlook inside.
2. In Entourage you have to add a directory server to your Exchange server settings to communicate with your ActiveDirectory Global Catalog Server using LDAP. Almost no companies will enable this to work externally. This page illustrates some of the concerns and potential mitigation strategies. I think you are out of luck here, though.

Even if you get it working, you will likely run into more problems. Among the things we've seen, especially with remote Entourage users are calendars failing to sync changes back to the server properly as well as general sync failures due to corrupt messages on the client-side... all of which is difficult/impossible to diagnose and repair due to an utter lack of useful logging information.

You might check out the idea of running Outlook on your Mac using CrossOver Mac. Just check with your IT department to see if remote Outlook access is enabled using RPC over HTTP first. If that's not enabled, Outlook users can't connect externally for full Exchange access so it isn't worth your while.
posted by rocketpup at 8:43 AM on January 13, 2009

I just tried mail."companydomain".com. It works out of the office, but not in the office. Sent mail went out but was not visible in my sent mail in outlook on my office computer.

Also, in Entourage, it does appear that I am using an Exchange server setup, not IMAP or POP.
posted by kdern at 9:23 AM on January 13, 2009

With every version of Office:Mac, MS says they've "got Entourage right", and every version sucks as much as the one before. Have you tried using Apple Mail as an Exchange client? It'll probably give less grief in the long run.

As for your specific issues:

- Does mail.[COMPANYDOMAIN].com resolve at all internally? Your internal network may not recognize that address, talk to your IT department.

- Is Entourage set to save Sent messages? I can't remember if/where Entourage has this setting, but it's typically in the account setup. You may have unchecked.
posted by mkultra at 9:57 AM on January 13, 2009

Note that Apple Mail requires the Exchange server to support IMAP access in order to work.
posted by rocketpup at 10:17 AM on January 13, 2009 [1 favorite]

The trick here is to use the address for webmail (OWA), not exchange.

Can you access webmail from inside the office (most offices can). If so, that's the address you need to use in Entourage outside the office, and it should also work inside the office. However, some offices will have it redirect webmail."company".com to some other server, so you'll need to either work out the correct OWA address, or ask the IT department.
posted by ranglin at 6:15 PM on January 13, 2009