7 ms·
Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support
- zipy124 10mo agoGuess this means I can cancel all my OWL subscriptions.
- TomasEkeli 10mo agoI'll stick with Owl for a while longer. This native feature doesn't support calendars or address books, making it essentially worthless to me. Also it's based on a protocol that's dying (slowly). Good to see they're attending to exchange support, but this is a lackluster step.
- ivanbakel 10mo agoWhat I'm most curious about, and what the docs are light on detail about: does this mean Thunderbird complies with remote deletion requests (which IIRC, the Exchange protocol suppports)? I have the impression that Microsoft makes this a requirement for Exchange implementations, which is why third-party devices and apps like Apple's Mail cooperate with those requests.
- seethishat 10mo agoThat would be Active Sync: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients/exchange-activesync/exchange-activesync https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients/exchange-... Not sure how Mozilla went about the implementation, but I do agree it would be a concern to verify before using. You can perform the following Exchange ActiveSync tasks: Enable and disable Exchange ActiveSync for users Set policies such as minimum password length, device locking, and maximum failed password attempts Initiate a remote wipe to clear all data from a lost or stolen mobile phone Run a variety of reports for viewing or exporting into a variety of formats Control which types of mobile devices can synchronize with your organization through device access rules
- rkagerer 10mo agoSome clients perform some of those operations in a sandbox. Eg. Nine for Android let's you choose when you set up an account whether a remote wipe command should just wipe that account's local mailbox, or your whole device.
- semi-extrinsic 10mo agoActiveSync will forever be reserved for the technology I used to sync email and calendar on my HP Jornada 430 running Windows CE - just like James Bond did!
- graemep 10mo agoDo you mean recall? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/recall-an-outlook-email-message-35027f88-d655-4554-b4f8-6c0729a723a0 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/recall-an-outlook... That only works within an organisation, right? Otherwise you just get an email. I got one recently.
- ivanbakel 10mo agoNo, Exchange ActiveSync (as the other commenter correctly identified it) really allows an admin to wipe your device - ostensibly of mail, but often of all other data as well.[0] If your Outlook server disables IMAP & POP3, then the ActiveSync protocol is AFAIK the only way to get in-app emails on your phone. Admins do this so that they can forcibly wipe the device if they "need" to. 0: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients/exchange-activesync/remote-wipe https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients/exchange-...
- userbinator 10mo agoThis may turn out like those PDF "security" features, i.e. easy to patch out and ignore.
- creatonez 10mo agoIt actually downloads BleachBit and runs it so that even god can't read your emails /s
- bnchrch 10mo agoWhile 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 arrived on the scene, an OSS mail client that beat the pants off of Outlook in features, spam detection, IMAP support and a bunch of other things. And it was free. And you could use it on any machine. This was a huge moment for OSS. We owe a lot of credit to Mozilla and Thunderbird for rescuing us from a closed source world.
- briffle 10mo agoBefore Thunderbird, Eudora was fantastic. We ran it at a college I worked at for most of the staff and faculty, and it was a very sad day when Qualcomm shut it down.
- kstrauser 10mo agoEudora was nice, but it wasn't available for Linux/BSD, and it wasn't open source.
- canucker2016 10mo agoEudora was open-sourced in 2018. see https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-eudora-email-client-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-eudora-email-client-sou... and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) The last 'mainline' (pre-OSE) versions of Eudora for Mac and Windows were open-sourced and preserved as an artefact by the Computer History Museum[2] in 2018; as part of the preservation, the CHM assumed ownership of the Eudora trademark. The only actively maintained fork of the software, known as Eudoramail as of June 2024, originates from 'mainline' Eudora for Windows as preserved by the CHM. Hermes, its current maintainers, describe Eudoramail 8.0 as currently being in alpha; Wellington publisher Jack Yan, meanwhile, points out its stability, a number of well-characterised and reproducible display bugs notwithstanding. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)#Hiatus_and_source_code_release_(2006%E2%80%932025) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)#Hiatus_a... On May 22, 2018, after five years of discussion with Qualcomm, the Computer History Museum acquired full ownership of the source code, the Eudora trademarks, copyrights, and domain names. The transfer agreement from Qualcomm also allowed the Computer History Museum to publish the source code under the BSD open source license. The Eudora source code distributed by the Computer History Museum is the same except for the addition of the new license, code sanitization of profanity within its comments, and the removal of third-party software whose distribution rights had long expired. recent news, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)#Under_Hermes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)#Under_He...
- yellowapple 10mo agoFantastic news! I've been hoping for Exchange support for a long while.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Jeff-Collins 10mo ago[flagged]
- drannex 10mo agoReiterating what another HN user said about this account: You told an LLM to generate three possible responses to HN articles and then just started pasting all three?
- dredmorbius 10mo ago<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10808926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10808926>
- cosmic_cheese 10mo agoNice to see, but unfortunately it's not uncommon for orgs using Outlook/Office to disable Exchange client support and require use of the official clients. It's highly unlikely and maybe not even possible, but I'd like to see desktop and mobile mail clients implement some kind of workaround.
- stackskipton 10mo agoMicrosoft plays wack a mole with 3rd party clients trying to gain access when it's been disabled so it's thankless job for their developers. Not to mention, if I'm disabling your third party access, trying to circumvent is Employee policy violation and you get to talk to HR about why you don't want to play by the rules.
- xigoi 10mo ago> Not to mention, if I'm disabling your third party access, trying to circumvent is Employee policy violation and you get to talk to HR about why you don't want to play by the rules. If you want your employees to install malware, maybe you should issue them a company device instead of requiring them to install it on their personal device.
- fsiefken 10mo agoI was responsible for third party e-mail clients able to connect to Exchange, it was decided Thunderbird was allowed and support was implemented. It can be done if people are aware of the needs, can implement it securely and can evaluate risks.
- jayknight 10mo agoI've been using Outlook Lite on my phone for a long time because I don't want to give my employer admin rights in my phone, and I'm getting messages that that is now deprecated. I guess I'll go back to webmail in Firefox Mobile.
- jchw 10mo agoI 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.
- sdk- 10mo agoWe 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-mozilla-connect-updates/ 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.
- shevy-java 10mo agoIs this good? This is a genuine question. I am not sure whether this is good or not. It seems to only extend existing options? Or is there some trade-off?
- cachius 10mo agoThis is awesome! For one to have an open-source client to Exchange online and on-premise with broad support for more than plain email management. And also for other servers like Kerio Connect and grommunio. Current limitations: Search & filtering Filter actions requiring full body content are not yet supported. Accounts hosted on Microsoft 365 Domains requiring custom OAuth2 application and tenant IDs will be supported in the future. Accounts hosted on-premise Password-based NTLM authentication and OAuth2 for on-premise servers are on the roadmap. Calendar support Not yet implemented – calendar syncing is on the roadmap. Address book / contacts support Not yet implemented – address book support is on the roadmap. Microsoft Graph support Not yet implemented – Microsoft Graph integration will be added in the future.
- MrZander 10mo agoAwesome news, can't wait until they implement calendar support and I can get rid of Outlook once and for all.
- jurakovic 10mo agoYeah, me too
- tacker2000 10mo agoThanks! I have a few Exchange inboxes and once MS forces the “New Outlook” design, without allowing the legacy option anymore, im gone!
- stackskipton 10mo agoAs former Exchange admin/Office365, it's using EWS (Exchange Web Services) which is being removed in October 2026 for Office365. So for most, this is extremely time limited. EDIT: EWS continues to be supported for on premises Exchange and is not scheduled for deprecation.
- trympet 10mo agoHow do you know Thunderbird is using EWS, not MAPI? MAPI is not going away any time soon.
- sjoerger 10mo agoRead the docs? https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/thunderbird-adds-native-microsoft-exchange-email-support/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/thunderbird-adds-native...
- trympet 10mo agoYikes, thanks. Enjoy this feature while it lasts, I guess. EWS is getting nuked.
- stackskipton 10mo agoRead the article?
- drannex 10mo ago> it's using EWS (Exchange Web Services) which is being removed in October 2026 for Office36 This is Microsoft we're talking about here, so if its slated for removal in Oct '26, it will be put into LTS, and finally 'retired' (but operational) _starting_ around 2031.
- stackskipton 10mo agoMicrosoft swears it's happening: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/retirement-of-exchange-web-services-in-exchange-online/3924440 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.
- 5- 10mo agogreat to see thunderbird joining evolution in supporting ews among free software email clients. evolution has been keeping me sane whenever i needed to use ews for years.
- Onavo 10mo agoDoes it implement the famous "sweep" feature from Outlook?
- jrm4 10mo agoWONDERFUL. If it works, literally life improving for me. My browser slows to a crawl with the silliness like copilot on the side. And at the risk of asking too much (because this was a thing we used to have as a plugin)... ...any possibility of color-coding separate accounts?
- vorprokuror 10mo agoHi 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
- InMice 10mo agoTry Thunderbird
- benbucksch 10mo ago(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.
- ConanRus 10mo ago[dead]
- richx 10mo agoI like Thunderbird, it’s a great tool for private use. One killer feature I always missed (not sure if it exists today by default in Thunderbird), is the great calendar integration of outlook. I use the calendar a lot, during work but also to organize our family. It’s super important for me to able to send invites to co workers and my wife :-)
- imp0cat 10mo agoSince last year, TB has native caldav/carddav support.
- Telemakhos 10mo agoI've never seen a piece of software that managed to implement all of the iCalendar specification, which to me seemed like a data model for a good productivity app that's just never manifested. iCalendar (RFC 2445 from 1998) outlined not only events but todo and a journal component for memorializing meetings. Outlook seems to ignore VTODO entries in iCalendar completely, and VJOURNAL support is deprecated.
- pr3dr49 10mo agoSweet memories of several email clients mentioned here. I also remember the mail client built into the old Norsk version of Opera. I loved that, a much as I loved that browser. I take it mutt still does not have native Microsoft Exchange support?
- kmarc 10mo agoDavmail is the shim I used to proxy OWA / exchange ansmd present an IMAP interface towards neomutt. Used this setup with three companies, worked well, and unified the UX instead of the different Gmail and Outlook web slowness.
- AndyMcConachie 10mo agoThis is wonderful. Thank you Thunderbird!
- spacechild1 10mo agoNice! I have been paying for ExQuilla because my university's IT department disabled IMAP and only supports Exchange...
- mstngl 10mo agoSo far this extension was a solution for accessing Mail-Accounts hosted on Exchange and even O365 by using OWA in a miraculous manner. It‘s not easy to overlook how this compares for simple end-user. Owl for Thunderbird https://reviewers.addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/owl-for-exchange/?src=cb-dl-users https://reviewers.addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/a...
- KetoManx64 10mo agoWas and still is a solution. I use this functionality daily and it just works. Very satisfied to be able to use Thunderbird on my work Linux install.
- vzaliva 10mo agoThe 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 it, it will be very awkward to use in a day-to-day corporate environment.
- prmoustache 10mo agoI 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.
- DANmode 10mo agoUnproductive culture.
- nashashmi 10mo agoI’d be more excited for thunderbird if it worked on an open source alternative to EXCHANGE SERVER. Firefox and thunderbird are clients. But it is time they launched servers as well. There might not be any advantage to another https server. But a new mail server with a new email client protocol would be exciting. And maybe a WebDAV server that Firefox could work with natively.
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo agoThere are several open source mail server options available. The only real new protocol is JMAP which is pretty good and I’d much rather more clients and servers support JMAP than create a new protocol altogether.
- cookiengineer 10mo agoI can recommend trying out Mox as an email server. The author built everything from scratch and does a lot of great work when it comes to unifying everything. The wizard spits out all the discovery, DKIM, DMARC, DANE and MTA STS related subdomains you have to change the entries of (that is the most painful part) but everything else really works like a charm. Much much easier installation process than weeks of trying to make postfix and dovecot work. [1] https://xmox.nl https://xmox.nl [2] https://www.xmox.nl/protocols/ https://www.xmox.nl/protocols/
- psittacus 10mo agoTake a look at Open-Xchange, it's not developed by Thunderbird folks but otherwise fits the bill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Xchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Xchange mailbox.org is based on it.
- pavon 10mo agoI'm now aware of three protocols that Exchange has used: MAPI, EPW, and Microsoft Graph. Are all of these supported/commonly used in both on-premise and Office365 environments, are are some limited to one or the other?
- nipperkinfeet 10mo agoThis is great news because the new version of Outlook is terrible. When the good old Win32 version goes away, everyone will be looking for an alternative.
- 29athrowaway 10mo agoMicrosoft could have effortlessly made it easier for others to implement integrations with Microsoft Exchange but they won't. They needed to make sure as many people as possible get vendor locked. Imagine going to work, and having a meeting about how you can make it harder for your software to interoperate with other software. Or waking up in the morning and spending your day designing a proprietary protocol designed to prevent interoperability. That's just another day at Microsoft.
- tralarpa 10mo ago"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
- enbugger 10mo agoIt's funny because now the OSS starts supporting extended protocol. Guess MS's next step
- G_o_D 10mo agoAll facts aside, Thunderbird is portable, you can install it on usb and carry your mailbox in pocket, connect to any pc and access without touching host filesystem, if pc has internet browse new mails and all i always carry it on pendrive with encrypted partition, and encryption software is also natively installed on usb, so no use of host pc for anything, mail or decryption
- ajsnigrutin 10mo agoNot just that, you have all your emails with you, even without internet, even when aws/azure/cloudflare/... fails, plus you can write replies and everything else while offline and just send/sync when you get internet access (eg. on a cheap flight with expensive wifi). Many things don't need an app, a web site is enough (and they somehow force apps onto us), but email, especially with something like thunderbird is a great thing to have directly installed on your pc (or portable with you).
- vegardstenvik 10mo agoAnd you randomly use public or other peoples computers? Seems more inconvenient than just having email on your phone.
- tehdely 10mo agoTo be honest, it's disappointing that this lacks calendar and address book integration (for now). There's plenty of prior art in terms of delivering full functionality via EWS, and I'm surprised their first release is this spartan. It's not like they're trying to support MAPI or something else that would need to be reverse-engineered. My solution 15 years ago, when I needed to support Linux users, was Thunderbird plus a middleware tool called DavMail. Something like that is probably still the best option until Thunderbird is able to deliver more full functionality. Nice to see them working on the thing, at least.
- XorNot 10mo agoInteresting, but I wonder if the Oauth with Yubikeys is fixed yet? My work email is behind Okta and I can get through the whole flow of Oauth up till it hits the WebAuthN..which works but it won't display a pin entry dialog.
- self_awareness 10mo agoDoesn't work for me, and the account creation window itself is buggy with poor UX, throws a general error and requires me to retype password each time I try to use a different set of settings.
- RagnarD 10mo agoWhat took so long?
- tracker1 10mo agoLacking calendar and contacts sync are a critically missing feature here. I'm not sure what there is to like here above IMAP access. Aside: Mozilla should really create a nice full-featured email server with the features found in Exchange/O365 for use with Thunderbird... it's a space that desperately needs competition and more solutions.