Setting up Evolution to use Microsoft Exchange
 

Today I installed Fedora 7 and have updated the system with the latest Evolution update. I am (now) running version 2.10.3.

I use Evolution 2.10.1 on my Ubuntu 7.04 system, and it provides the user the choice to setup a MS-Exchange server email account. However, with the newer version of Evolution on my F7 system, no such option exists.

Can someone give me some direction as to how I can setup a MS-Exchange email account?

I read in another thread (that I found when Googling) that IMAP and MS-Exchange are the "same". However my attempts to use IMAP were not successful.

Any ideas?

http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2006/10/...buntu-606-610/
Works OK for me ... option to select MS exchange account is in the drop-down menu on the second screen.

So are you saying the solution is for me to uninstall Fedora 7 and install Ubuntu instead just so I can get the "MS Exchange" option in the drop-down menu of Evolution?

It seems kind of a drastic solution if you ask me.

Does anybody have any suggestions that I could do to permit me to setup a MS Exchange account under Evolution?

The version of Evolution that I am running on F7 does not include "MS Exchange" in the pull-down of mail-server choices.

<sigh>No... I am running Evolution 2.10.1 but you have 2.10.3... the program is supposed to be distro independent. It shouldn't matter if you run it on fedora, ubuntu, xandros, slackware, or dumbox.

It was possible, as Novell Evolution is supposed to work with ekchange, that the upgrade just put the option in a different place to what you were used to. I didn't find it obvious. Thus the tutorial - you asked for ... and that is what you got.

Technically, it is possible that the fedora crew have been fiddling with it, or the update did something new... <checking> I see something called evolution-exchange

Perhaps that is what you're looking for.
Suggest you browse the repos for anything exchange related.

Equally technically, I am a Free Software proponent... the real answer is not to use MS Exchange.

Sorry to "bite" back at you earlier, but I have posted on occasion questions here on LQ (and on the Ubuntu Forums) where someone would propose something either in "left-field" or something preposterous.

I am aware of the Evolution 2.10.1 because I use it on another system (running Ubuntu 7.04); however I was surprised that the same support was not available (yet?) with Fedora 7.

Anyhow, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Once again, please accept my apologies.

Well, it surprised me that exchange support appeared to have gone completely. Ubuntu's evolution will take a wee while to catch up, so we'll see. It struck me that the fedora developers have been increasingly pernickety about the Freedom of the software that they include, and it is entirely possible that they have removed exchange support in the official fedora install of evolution. (I certainly don't see why Novell would exclude it by default.) In which case, it will be included as a separate package to be added post install (like mp3 support). Sure enough, there is an additional package for exchange support in evolution...

This would be par for the course and a reasonable way to handle non-free stuff. I don't actually know how proprietary exchange is - presumably more than doc format.

Be careful about dismissing those left-field suggestions. Some are just facetious ... pointing out that using free software is best. However, this being a volunteer effort, nobody feels constrained to answer the question as stated. The more talented among us will attempt to address some perceived underlying issue instead - thus providing an answer that you need rather than the one you say you want.

An obvious example would be someone asking how to compile from source when there is an rpm available and the user clearly has network access.

Sometimes a distro change is warranted. If you were relying on an exchange server, then would be reasonable to suggest you use a distribution that supports this out of the box rather than struggle with a distro whos maintainers give only begrudging support.

fedora is deliberately cutting-edge. Your price for this is that something will stop going for a while as the different versions catch up. Try not to update anything mission-critical that you don't have to.

Probably yaur easiest approach is to downgrade evolution to a legacy version and see.

Check whether you have Exchange Connector installed. Otherwise something like this should install it

#yum install exchange-connector

FYI, as far as I know, it only supports Exchange Server 2000 upwards (uses WebDAV). So no need to bother to connect to Exchange 5 with it.

There's nothing about whether you run Fedora, Ubuntu, RHEL or any Linux distro for that matter. I don't know about a dropdown menu entry. But I know for a fact that it works on Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL and CentOS. So drop complaining about distros and get working on. It's not that difficult. Google will help.

Don't get wrong about my tone. I'm still friendly as LQ itself. :)

Note: I'm not sure whether it's available via yum for Fedora 7, or the package name is evolution-connector or evolution-exchange or else.

SkyEye

Generally I do my own research and I did come across the 'exchange-connector' the other day, however I could not get the darn thing installed.

Today, after reading your email, I once again I ran "yum install evolution-connector". Yum reported back that there was "nothing to do".

After running a "yum whatprovides evolution-connector", I was shown two versions of the evolution-exchange, one for version 2.10.0-1.fc7 and 2.10.3-1.fc7. Obviously, I want the latter.

So then I ran "yum update evolution-connector". The response was "Could not find update match..." and "No packages marked for update".

Then once again I ran "yum install evolution-connector", and then finally yum decided to install the package!

Now I have MS-Exchange support with Evolution. :) Thank you!

I'm still scratching my head concerning yum. Why the heck didn't it install evolution-connect the other day when I tried it... or even the first time today when I tried it? I always thought that "update" was to update existing packages and that "install" was to install new packages.

Btw, after I first installed F7, I did not run a "yum update" directly, but instead relied on the update-manager to get all system updates.

Yeah, yum does that. :) I was really irritated a couple of times because it was saying nothing to do, but later doing the thing.

Anyway, glad you got your problem solved. Great to see when someone does his homework and get it done. Way to go. :)

I finally decided to attempt to connect to my office's exchange server thru my VPN connection. When Evolution attempts to connect, it fails due to this error:

Error while Scanning folders in "Exchange
server 10.10.10.97/exchange".

Could not connect to Evolution Exchange backend process:
Please restart Evolution

Does anybody have any idea what this "backend process" is and if my system is indeed missing it, how do I get it?

Skyeye had recently provided me with assistance on how to add the MS Exchange plugin to Evolution 2.10.3.

Btw, I am able to ping 10.10.10.97 so I know it is not the VPN connection that is at fault.

SkyEye thanks for the solution I installed this packade from terminal and then I could choose Exchange Server

From terminal type this.

"aptitude install evolution evolution-exchange" This will install Evolution client and Exchange Server support for this client on Debian Linux.

Lex

I sure wish it were that easy with Fedora 7. I installed the plugin, but still no joy. I wonder if SELinux has anything to do with it. It seems it block certain configuration steps when installing certain packages.

dwhitney67 I agree I think it is SELinux. I use to use RedHat in 1996 - 1999, Windows 2000, Fedora 2006 - 2007, Debian Etch 4.0 and nothing compares to the latter. If you jump distro's I can help you install and get this setup in 1 hour or less.

Edit this file and make it look exactly like with nothing extra. >> /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main

deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org stable main

#non-free in Debian and contrib in Debian
deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ /etch non-free contrib

After a base install using a business card
install image and high speed internet connection, type the following at the terminal and sit back and let it go to town.

aptitude update dist-upgrade

fix the gpg errors by substituting the numbers 033431536A423791 with the rrors number you see.

gpg --keyserver hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 033431536A423791

gpg --armor --export 033431536A423791 | apt-key add -


aptitude install xorg kdm-core kde-core openoffice.org mozilla-firefox debian-multimedia-keyring java-package alsa opera mozilla-mplayer -t testing gimp alien gaim libfuse2 fuse-utils msttcorefonts lame libdvdcss acroread acroread-escript acroread-plugins mozilla-acroread ntfsprogs xmms synaptic kuser kmix gzip bzip2 tar p7zip unzip unrar lzop rzip rpm binutils lha arj cabextract unace ppmd ark ogle ogle-gui ncompress p7zip-full zip zoo evolution evolution-exchange

Use this website to configure Evolution with Exchange Server

http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2006/10/...buntu-606-610/

Do you have evolution-exchange package installed. Fedora does not come with this package but Ubuntu does.