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Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

blog.thunderbird.net

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Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#71

Post by yawniek »

rzzzt wrote: post #64
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eudora was practically a CULT. I worked for one of their users who straight refused to use anything else, and one of my ongoing jobs as an admin was trying to get Exchange to play nice with it. It was maddening. I fired it up several times for testing purposes, I don't get the hype, but man, for some people it was just the best damn software ever made.

I've seen "The Bat!" pop up frequently in computer magazine CDs as well, not sure how widely it was used though.

The Bat! was absolutely the best email client. ever. way ahead of eudora. it was a massive step back when i switched to my first macbook in 2006 (the black one!) and started to use Thunderbird. That said Thunderbird is fantastic now and great to see it get native Exchange support!

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#72

Post by dijit »

godelski wrote: post #44
stackskipton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft swears it's happening: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement... Take the blog article for what you will. I have noticed in Office365, they tend to be less backward compatible than you would expect from Microsoft.

> Microsoft swears it's happening And when has that ever meant it comes without delay?

to be fair with you, EWS has been deprecated since I think 2014, so we're already in the "pushed" window.

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#73

Post by mmooss »

yawniek wrote: post #71
rzzzt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen "The Bat!" pop up frequently in computer magazine CDs as well, not sure how widely it was used though.

The Bat! was absolutely the best email client. ever. way ahead of eudora. it was a massive step back when i switched to my first macbook in 2006 (the black one!) and started to use Thunderbird. That said Thunderbird is fantastic now and great to see it get native Exchange support!

What is it like to use The Bat?

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#74

Post by sdk- »

jchw wrote: post #16

I generally like Thunderbird... but something is weird. What ever happened to Sync? It was around the corner for next release like two years ago. And I'm not complaining about Exchange support, but I am a bit sad that JMAP is nowhere to be found yet.

We implemented this in the Daily build of the desktop app last year, using a staging environment for Firefox Sync. But Firefox Sync is called Firefox Sync because it’s built for Firefox. Thunderbird profiles, in comparison, have a lot more data points. This meant we had to build something completely different. As we started to spin up Thunderbird Pro, we decided it made more sense to have a Thunderbird account that would manage everything, including Sync. Unfortunately, this meant a lot of delays. So Sync is still on our radar, and we hope to have it next year, barring further complications. Source: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/09/state-of-the-thunder-mo...

In other words, it was more work to adapt Firefox Sync than they thought at the beginning. It's still actively developed so finger crossed it's coming soon.

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#75

Post by 1718627440 »

KPGv2 wrote: post #60
godelski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use Thunderbird and I love it. Even though I absolutely hate email and it is a chaotic clusterfuck we act like is bulletproof. I'm incredibly impressed at how feature deficit email is, but Thunderbird gives a lot of power back. It's just a lot of little things that add up. Like why is tagging and sorting so hard? But Thunderbird makes it easy, giving you as many as you want and let you label as you please. In…

> I'm incredibly impressed at how feature deficit email is . . . It's just a lot of little things that add up. Like why is tagging and sorting so hard? If you read the specifications for the various email protocols, you'll soon discover that email, at the protocol level, is at its most feature-rich akin to flat files stored in a hierarchy of folders. Tags, sorting, etc. are all the responsibility of clients. (Which i…

In this context, the relevant protocol is IMAP, not SMTP. And IMAP very much has tagging and filtering, which is what Thunderbird exposes here. Heck, IMAP even has notes, you can attach to mails, so you could discuss mail drafts using plain IMAP, but no client I know exposes this.

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#76

Post by fpauser »

godelski wrote: post #40
bnchrch wrote: post #3

While its been a long time since Ive used Thunderbird, I just wanted to take the time to publicly say thank you. Many HNers probably wont (or cant) remember the world of desktop mail clients but basically during the height of MSFT dominance there was only one real mail client: Outlook. Which Microsoft was starting to monetize heavily, ignore UX, and keep it windows only (cant blame them for that). Then Thunderbird ar…

I still use Thunderbird and I love it. Even though I absolutely hate email and it is a chaotic clusterfuck we act like is bulletproof. I'm incredibly impressed at how feature deficit email is, but Thunderbird gives a lot of power back. It's just a lot of little things that add up. Like why is tagging and sorting so hard? But Thunderbird makes it easy, giving you as many as you want and let you label as you please. In…

> I'm incredibly impressed at how feature deficit email is . . .

It's getting better soon. Have a look at the jmap standard and stalwart, a high performant jmap server implementation in rust. This is the future!

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#78

Post by prmoustache »

vzaliva wrote: post #70

The lack of native Microsoft Outlook support was one of the reasons I've abandoned Thunderbird. However, it is still not enough for me to come back. Sadly, corporate life is often organised around email and calendaring. All these endless meetings everyone complains about, which need to be scheduled, accepted, rejected, re-scheduled, etc. The native Exchange support does not yet support Calendar integration. Without i…

I barely ever open outlook at work. In fact I only open it on the webmail when someone asks me on teams if I have read their email.

Much quieter that way as you only get to hear about the important stuff and can ignore the rest of the noise.

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#79

Post by benbucksch »

vorprokuror wrote: post #51

Hi guys, what email client would be most suitable for managing 100++ mailboxes with the unified inbox option? Is there a local or self hosted options that you could recommend? Yes that’s for outreach

(OFFTOPIC!)

I would not recommend that with any email clients. Most are built with the assumption that you have around 3 to 8 accounts. UI, speed, and configuration may become an issue. Esp. the unified inbox in Thunderbird was slow in my personal use.

What are these mailboxes? Are they changing a lot? That's also a factor to decide in your setup.

If you have hundreds of mailboxes, and you're posting on HN here, chances are you are technically competent. I would recommend a local IMAP server like Dovecot or Stalwart installed as Docker, and then fetchmail or similar to pull (copy) all the mail into a single inbox. And then your email client uses only that one account which has all emails.

Re: Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

#80

Post by trympet »

sjoerger wrote: post #27
trympet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know Thunderbird is using EWS, not MAPI? MAPI is not going away any time soon.

Read the docs? https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/thunderbird-adds-native...

Yikes, thanks. Enjoy this feature while it lasts, I guess. EWS is getting nuked.
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