Connecting to Exchange Server 2007 from remote PC

[mladd]

Morning all,
I am having an issue where I am trying to connect to Exchange 2007 using Outlook 2007, but I am not on the company's network. I know that on my Mac and my iPhone I just use the owa.domain.com to access E-mail, Calendars, Global Address Book, etc. However, It tells me it can't connect to the server when I try this from my PC. Since I use my PC for development, it would be nicer to be able to get both my personal and my client's E-mail on the same laptop, and one less thing to carry around when I travel every week.

I'm trying to find out what other server names does Outlook recognize. I've also tried the oma.domain.com with no success.

Any ideas? I haven't spoken with the help desk yet, as they will most likely tell me it's not allowed, however it's specifically granted in my contracts and didn't want to spend days jumping through corporate hoops just to get someone to help me with this, unless it was absolutely necessary.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[58sniper]

You need to talk to them. They may not even allow remote access via Outlook.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[mladd]

I have, and they do allow it.

They keep giving me urls like the

https://owa.domain.com

I'm not sure why this is so dificult for them to understand. Using Explorer to connect to a Webmail URL is NOT the same as using Outlook 2007. They seem to think it is.

Is there not a way to configure Outlook 2007 to use one of these URL's? I can't seem to find the right configuration in the Mail Control Panel.

Either way, it's just funny that it "just works" on two Apple products but not on Outlook.

 

[alfa2008]

They have to configure Outlook Anywhere in Server side first. After that you can configure your Outlook using

https://owa.domain.com,

or similar.

 

[58sniper]

It's up to them. They could certainly use the same URL, they could something different. Each organization is different, and Exchange has several ways of doing things.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[mladd]

Pat,
You mean something different across different clients? If it works on one platform/client, why wouldn't it work on another.

I believe the issue is strictly with my configuration. I seem to be closer to resolving this by using Connect Using HTTP in the Advanced Settings. I am now getting a User/PW dialog box, but still returning an error.

In the General setup window I add owa.domain.com in the Exchange Server Settings and my domain\username for the Mailbox. When I "Check Name" it returns "Outlook can not log on. Verify you are connected to the network and are using the proper server and mailbox name...".
Now, when I change the mailbox to be my username@owa.domain.com for the mailbox I get a new dialog box saying "Connect to owa.domain.com" and asks for my User Name and Password. I can only assume this is now asking for my domain information (since the same information I entered before still does not work. But it just keeps returning this dialog box.

Any help pointing me in the right direction would be helpful, even though I understand it's difficult to determine since all Exchange servers are not created equally.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[58sniper]

In a correctly configured Exchange 2007, you shouldn't be doing anything. Exchange 2007 has Autodiscover, which Outlook 2007 can take full advantage of and automatically configure and connect.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[mladd]

Pat, I appreciate the responses. I'm trying to understand though, unless I'm on the same network, how would Autodiscover know what Exchange Server I am trying to get to? Simply by the E-Mail address? So far, that hasn't worked, which it also did not work on my other two non-Microsoft/non-PC devices. I had to manually enter the owa server for those two devices to be able to get e-mail and meetings pushed to them. Once I entered that they have both been flawless in connecting to their Exchange Server.

I am trying to simply set up my PC the same way as the other devices. Is this not possible with Outlook? If not, is there another E-Mail client that can accomplish this?

Again, I appreciate the timely responses.

-Mike

 

[58sniper]

As mentioned above, Outlook should detect it via Autodiscover, just like Windows Mobile 6.1 (and later) devices. Windows Mobile devices, Outlook Web Access, and remote Outlook (called "Outlook Anywhere"), all have different pieces going on in the background, and different connection methods. No one can answer questions about your environment better than your own support people. You need to talk to them.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[charlie2908]

Have you installed the RPC over HTTP Proxy? To use outlook Anywhere you need to install the RPC over HTTP proxy feature because you would need all high end ports open for RPC. This may be why you hit the site but can't authenticate.
I have it working fine here in my office without the autodiscover over the internet. It just means you have to configure the outlook client.