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Wednesday, October 27, 2004

IMAP(ing) your way to multiple inboxes

I have SBS 2003 running at my house, the curious thing is I have Exchange running at my house too. As you probably know, you cannot have two Exchange servers configured in a single Outlook profile. Sure you can have multiple profiles, but who wants to shut Outlook down to check if you have email at home? I didn't.

I just turned on the IMAP folders on SBS and added an IMAP server to my Exchange profile, now I can check both email accounts without having to close and re-open Outlook.

Here's how I configured the IMAP server:

  1. in the services.msc snap-in, I just started the Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service by setting it to automatic and then started

  2. Open port 143 (TCP only) and ensure it's pointed at the server (if you're using a router box)

That's all there is to it.

Now from your Outlook client or Mobile device client, you can set-up a new email server and check the email from both the Exchange server, and the IMAP server (other Exchange server).

One more point, in Outlook if you're trying to delete messages and they are only getting stroked out, be sure to check out Edit, Perge Deleted Messages to actually remove these from the server. They will be permanently deleted though.

Also, all sent email via the IMAP server (change this by chosing the Accounts button on the new mail message window) will end up in the Exchange Server's sent items, instead of the remote IMAP servers sent items.

posted by Sean Daniel at 8:22 AM

5 Comments:

  • so how do i actually turn this feature off, if you dont mind me asking?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10/05/2006 12:50 AM  

  • Well, it's off by default, otherwise you can just stop the IMAP service and close port 143 on your network firewall.

    By Blogger Sean Daniel, at 10/05/2006 8:19 AM  

  • Thanks for the tips (I've got a similar setup at home), I've been up all night trying to figure it out using SSL.. Once I stopped trying to use my self-signed cert (in use for exchange-activesync-push capability) and went with port 143, it just worked. What am I missing trying to set up the SSL IMAP4 connection?

    By Anonymous Bill, at 12/27/2006 7:41 AM  

  • Hrm, I'm not sure, I have never used IMAP4 SSL, is the IMAP virtual directory configured to use the proper certificate?

    By Blogger Sean Daniel, at 1/03/2007 11:01 PM  

  • I've implemented IMAPS (SSL encrypted) as I didn't like the idea of credentials passing in clear text. It works. My issue has been trying to replicate the steps needed and blogging this. All I can say is doh! In any case I've also had to adjust ISA for this traffic too. Check out my blog for whatever I wrote many months ago. If you need some help, duit-at-fuse-dot-net.

    By Anonymous Dale Unroe, at 1/19/2007 10:06 AM  

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