Edit:
I am adding some additional steps here to help some folks get over the downloading and configuring of DavMail.
Step 1, download Davmail: http://sourceforge.net/projects/davmail/files/
the latest version will be under davmail (not davmail trunk or davmail beta)
As of this writing the latest is 3.8.8 and the mac version is listed last above the release notes.txt (http://sourceforge.net/projects/davmail/files/davmail/3.8.8/DavMail-MacOSX-3.8.8-1608.app.zip/download)
Step 2 Unzip (Do I need to explain this part? Tell me if I do…)
Step 3 Put the Davmail.app file in the Applications folder
Step 4 Start Davmail.app
Here is where it gets weird, I have had this running for so long I cant remember if I had to answer any questions but I can tell you what I have for my settings….
Step 5 When I start DavMail I get a small icon in the try at the top of the screen. Click on it (not right click for you windows prone users) and select settings. (if you do this and nothing seems to happen move all your windows and you will see the DavMail window hiding behind something ‘you cant apple+tab to get to it’)
Step 6 Enter entries:
OWA (Exchange) URL: https://your.owa.url.com/exchange/ * note the trailing / *
The rest on main are defaults… 1110, 1143, 1024, 1080, 1383. Under delays: 30, 30, 90, <blank>
Proxy tab: empty (for me, adjust to your specific needs)
Encryption tab: keystore type is JKS on my setup and everything else is empty (I assume this is defaults because I didnt change this)
Logging tab: log file path is empty and all types are set to warm except DavMail which is at DEBUG. (again this is default)
Advanced: server certificate has has something in it on mine but I didnt enter it.
Force ActiveSync update is checked.
Default windows domain has my domain name entered (no slashes, just the netbios short name)
IMAP auto expunge is checked….
Everything else is blank on this tab.
Again, most of this was out of the box defaults, I just had to put https://www.domain.com/exchange in the general tab and the rest was configured from within Mail, iCal and Address Book…..
————
OK, so if you are like me you have updated to Snow Leopard and have been having to resort to using a virtual machine (not a bad thing) to connect to your companies Exchange 2003 server. Face it, OWA is not good enough for a power user.
I have googled until my fingers have bled and could not find a solution that worked for me…. until now…
I am currently using mac mail, address book and ical to connect to an Exchange 2003 server through the help of http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
Their instructions are out of date as the screen shots are all based off of versions prior to 10.6 but here is where I deviated from what they had:
First get it installed. This part was easy and I just put in the full url that i use in chrome to get to OWA.
Adress Book was the kicker though. The old instructions were way off (although I did finally figure out where Directory Utility is in Snow Leopard (system preferences, accounts, login options, edit network account server, and there she is…)
But the actual fix was quite simple.
Address Book
Add new account:
next is the key because the instructions they have on their website say to put o=od which looked wrong and did not work for me. I had to put Search base to ou=people before things worked. Don’t forget to change authentication to simple and put in domain\user and password…
iCal
For iCal I used CalDAV and the server path of localhost. note: just the username, not domain\user
When you hit create you will get an error, just hit create again.
The server path described on their website was slightly off from what I ended up with.
Just using /principals/users/user@domain.com (where user@domain.com is your default email address on the host).
Don’t forget to change the port to 1080 (or whatever port you put CalDAV on from within DavMail)
Mac Mail
I didn’t have to do anything different from http://davmail.sourceforge.net/osximapmailsetup.html to get mail working.
Having said all this, I will let you guys know how things work over some time but for now I am just happy to have yet another Exchange email account ripped out of windows and placed in my happy Mac world 
Thanks for the info,
I got everything works, but the adress book…
it does not do anythings, if you have any clue..
Just wasting some time on Digg and I found your entry. Not typically what I like to read about, but it was certainly worth my time. Thanks.
Thanks. I spent ages trying to set up Address Book and you just solved it!
Andy idea how to get the Contacts to sync locally on the mac’s address book? (I’d like to be able to access Contact details when off line, without resorting to Entourage!)
I managed to get mail to work but ical still times out using your settings above. I also haven’t gotten the contacts to work. I am using Snow Leopard…
Nevermind I got it all to work! Thanks for the tutorial!
Very cool point, I also think the way you do. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, very cool.
Good stuff, and have done this for the last few weeks. However, my download rate has shot up as a result, and I’m over my ISP limit, resulting in speed restrictions…Am I doing something dreadfully wrong? It all works fine, but seems to endlessly download data…
I’ve not had that issue but I will look into it.
Help! I get error messages when I download the program.
I am stuck using Parallels now and cannot stand to use Windows on my Mac.
Please help
Hi Phil, thanx for an excellent article.
My boss shares his work calendar to me which I have to view in Entourage or iCal via a google cal account which seems a bit problematic.
Will I be able to use you tutorial to access his info and then sync it to my iPhone?
Many Thanx.
Will
Hi all. Phil, this worked like a charm in the exchange to iCal direction (i.e. I enter an appointment via browser to exchange and it appears on my iCal), but the reverse isn;t working (i.e. when I enter an appointment on my iCal it does not synch with exchange.) Has anyone else had this problem? Jeff
Im not sure about that… I will poke around and see what I can find out.
I had that problem one day and I think i either rebooted or at least killed davmail and restarted it. I also had outlook open within a VM and noticed that it takes a while for everything to sync up (added ical appointment to show up in outlook).
One thing to make sure of. When you add an appointment in iCal, make sure you are putting it on your Exchange calendar and not on the ‘on-my-mac’ calendar.
hi !, i have it working very fine at work , but when i get home and try to connect to my mail box thru MAIL it does not wort, fail to authentify “localhost” , any suggestion ?
thx a lot
V.L
Make sure davmail is running. Kill the process and restart it to make sure it’s listening on the new ip address…
I’m experimenting with DavMail on 10.6.4 client and Exchange 2003 server, and I like the integration with iCal. I can accept invitations and an acceptance eMail is automatically generated properly.
However, if I enter an event and try to invite people, MY invitations seem to fall into a black hole; nothing is generated at all. Is this something that is expected and is simply not working right now, or am I doing something wrong?
Has anyone been able to get a CardDAV account working in Snow Leopard’s Address Book? I can connect to the LDAP server, but I can’t get a CardDAV account to connect to my Exchange account Contacts. Anyone else have better luck?
Hi Phil,
Congratulations for your article, it is crystal clear and very helpful.
I was trying for months to connect Mail to the exchange via OWA and I finally found today Davmail and your site. Although I managed to connect everything, I could not make LDAP work until I read on your article to put “ou=people” in the search base. This small detail made the difference.
Thanks a lot for your work.
I just got a new iMac at work and since we’re still running Exchange 2003, I eagerly tried this but it hasn’t worked at all for me. Address Book shows no contact and iCal consistently tells me authentication failure. I’ve cranked up the log setting in DavMail and can see it is failing on NTLM authentication but I have no idea where to go from here. The company sysadmin is very friendly and helpful but I don’t really know what to ask him and I don’t see anything useful in either the FAQs or bugs over at DavMail.
Is this still working for you with DavMail 3.8.6 and 10.6.4? Any ideas of what to try next?
Thanks!
You sir are a genius! After a little bit of trial and error (and actually reading your directions instead of looking at pictures), I am up and running.
Hi.
Great Post, really helpful.
I manage to get the Address book to work, but only as a search is there a way to keep it always showing the names and phones…
I have not been able to do that one… Sorry
This is great, I have been trying to get my Exchange 2003 mail to work on my mac for some time.
Only problem I have is that mail disappears if I go to the Exchange inbox, if viewed from all inbox’s no problem, also already read mail on Outlook/OWA is not shown.
Don’t know if this is how it is, or I missed something on setup
Fix’d,
Looks like some windows crept in along with Exchange, close everything, reboot and it works.
It’s a pity setup was not as simple as iPhone/iPad as many major companies are sticking with Ex 2003
LIFESAVER!!!!!
Thank you thank you thank you. You know, if you really follow these directions it works like a charm! You’re the man, thank you so much.
Now I can use my mac to the fullest without having to concede to the trials of Entourage. What a horrible program.
Hi there,
it is not really going good for me.
1. the mail is syncing but really slow
2. can’t get the ical and the address book to sync
i am using macbook pro, latest OS X and exchange 2003
please help me what to do..
Thanks for your efforts in putting this together. Much appreciated!
I haven’t been able to make the address book work — followed the steps one by one — and was able to make everything worked BUT the GAL. Any input on how I can troubleshoot?
Thanks again,
Edo
YES! iCal and Apple Mail with name completion up and running in combination with a corporate Exchange Server 20007 with Outlook Web Access.
Now I don’t have to login anymore to see which meetings I have tomorrow and remember them, I can send mails from Apple Mail with my corporate e-mail address and e-mail addresses of my colleague just pop-up when I type their lastname.
Such a time saver, thanks for extra info Phil.
I had failed to use DavMail to do what you did (with success). Apparently, light-years of computer knowledge separate the programme (David Guessant I believe) and poor me.
Nevertheless, DavMail is still a long term objective of mine. I just sorted today my problem out using Plaxo (a facebook-like social network, in its “for pay” solution) with all securities “on” to minimize possibilities of dissemination of information in the Plaxo network, as a go-between the office PC and the home mac. It worked, reasonably well. Still, a direct sync (instead of indirect as with Plaxo), more solid and more secure, is still my objective. Buying Exchange for mac does not seem to do for me, in spite of the fact jud Specer of Microsoft mac division is a legacy programmer.
DavMail still appears to be my prime target solution.
The complexity is still huge to me.
I will jump into this as soon as I replace my 9-years old iBook (OS 10.4.11) by a more recent machine.
Thanks for the work, seems quite readable to me.
Hi, really helpful post.
Got my Exchange calendar working just fine.
A question though… is it possible to add a second Exchange 2003 calendar to iCal through the DavMail route at the same time?
I really like this option in reading about it, but it appears to require a working knowledge of how to set up a server on a mac. I have a standalone mac on a windows peer to peer network which connects via OWA and RDC to a 2003 exchange server, so this really appealed to me.
Can anyone point me in a direction for a step by step how to setup this dvmail in OSX 10.6.2? Because I can’t find the information on the dvmail site, and setting up virtual servers on my machine and opening up ports scares me a bit.
ANy help is appreciated.
Actually, if you can download a dmg file and drag a Mac app to your applications folder, then start the app, the rest is covered in this post… It is kind of like having to open a VPN before you can get into mail only you are proxy-ing through this “server”…
If you could give me more information it would help. Make sure to go over each option carefully (someone mentioned that the pictures alone were not enough). If there is something I need to change, someone please tell me and I will be happy to make updates. This has become one of the more popular threads on my blog so if something can make it better I am all for it.
Update this post as I just added some additional steps to the top.
I have everything working except the iCal autocomplete. I configured Directory Utility per the instructions on the DavMail site and the logs show the results being found they are just not being populated in the iCal invite list. Has anyone seen this and/or found a solution?
Hy Phil and thanks for your clean and detailed explanation.
One think I’d like to ask: as LDAP in Address Book is not so comfortable (you have to do a search, you can’t browse the whole list of addresses), did you figure out *why* the cardDAV configuration doesn’t work?
I had the same problem yesterday and thanks Google I found your site with the LDAP configuration, but I still would like to have it in cardDAV mode.
Any ideas or suggestions will be appreciated!
Thanks for your post!
F.
Having hunted around for a solution you have provided it, thank you. However I’m having problems setting it up. I’ve just acquired a macbook air for work and am trying to connect to my companies exchange 2003. Our IT team have set me up with Thunderbird, but I’m not getting on with it.
I’ve got mail working, but cant seem to get iCal working. Using your notes and the settings in Thunderbird/lightning I keep getting the following error message at the final stage:
The account information was not found
“The server has not specified a calendar home for the account at “/users/user.name@company.com/calendar/ — http://localhost:1080/”
Please can you advise?
it should be /principals/users/user.name@company.com/calendar/
did you forget the /principals/ part?
I tried that too and got the following :
The account was not found
The operation couldn’t be completed. (DAVErrorDomain error 30.)
Phil,
I just want to gush. 2 years of despair. I have the only mac setup in our exchange 2003 environment. It now connects. iCal works, mail works. Address book not yet, not so easy. I see others also struggle, can you give a little more nooby advice.
Phil, you are the man. Thank you.
Paul
Hi there,
Thanks for the tuto. I got the calendar working but I have troubles setting up my address book on 10.6.2.
It seems fairly straight forward but…
Anyone succeded? Any tips?
Thanks
Tony
Thanks, all working (now) BUT…
Address Book. I put in your settings and it just sits there. Doesn’t appear to even TRY to sync… Only have < 300 contacts so that should't take long (have gigabit connection to Exchange 2003 server).
Hi there,
This looks like a fantastic alternative to using Entourage. I only want to use iCal with my Exchange 2003 account. So I’ve unchecked all the ports under gateway aside CalDav and LDAP.
When I click create on the first window I get the error
‘No CalDAV servers were found for “local”.’ Which I believe is correct.
I then hit continue, and after typing the rest of your settings in, hit create and get:
‘The account information was not found.
The operation couldn’t be completed. (AYNetDBerrorDomain error 8.)’
Any tips?
Hello Phil,
Everything (mail, ical, address book) was working well on snow leopard with exchange 2003.
I’ve updated os x to Lion:
– mail is still fine and even more better!
– impossible to configure iCal
– don’t have to use address book, i haven’t test it…
I’ve you got an idea?
Thanks
Well, it’s July 22nd, the day after Mac OS X 10.7 (aka “Lion”) was released.
I finally found that even though MobileMe’s Exchange support on the iPhone and Microsoft Entourage works with Exchange 2003, but Lion’s new Mail 5.0 does not!
But thanks to DavMail, you can get Mail to work with Exchange 2003.
Simply follow the instructions for installing DavMail, version 3.9.2-1700 as of this comment. The only deviation that I made to was to DEselect Caldav HTTP port in the DavMail Gateway Settings. Since, I have an iPhone and have been updating things through MobileMe, no sense in doubling the effect.
The only other change was that I had to ADD my network’s DOMAIN, i.e. domain\username, into the User Name fields for both the Incoming AND Outgoing Mail Servers.
Hope this helps!
Does this work with Lion?
up and running with Lion. granted I have not installed from scratch with Lion.
This is a great piece of s/w — when Lion broke my mac’s VPN client I needed a non-entourage solution. The only problem is that I can’t seem to connect iCal (I keep getting the error message “Account can’t be saved to disk. Multiple validation errors occurred.” I’m using the config info described above, and searched the web (and tried many different permutations of information) to no avail. Any thoughts?
I have got everything going except ical on lion. Anyone figured that one out yet? Is it a DAVMail issue or an Apple issue?
Or am I just being dense, and there is no issue at all…
Thank you for the instructions. I was able to get Mail working without a hitch. I’m having no luck with the address book or iCal. iCal is what’s most important.
I’ve done everything that’s been suggested but after it tries to configure for about 30 seconds, I get an error.
“The account information was not found. The request timed out.”
I’m using build 1750 of Davmail.