Hi everyone,

Recently, we switched our organization to mailcow. Everything is working fine, but for some users stuck on Windows we have had some problems.

We have tried multiple clients, each with their own deal-breakers:

  • Outlook with EAS: E-mail works fine. Calendar does not sync back. (also, very heavy on the server with clients making requests constantly)
  • Outlook with CalDav Synchronizer: Profile disappears during setup. If you manage to set it up somehow you get a 500 ‘Request Failed’.
  • Thunderbird for Windows: very heavy on resources. Using up multiple gigabytes of memory and slowing even powerful machines to a halt.

These people are used to Exchange 2016 being behind everything. And we chose to not go to the big American Microsoft e-mail cloud. But to be honest, I sometimes regret my decision purely based on how much support I have to give to users. Users would like to e-mail, schedule appointments and look into the calendar of colleagues.

Meanwhile, users in Linux-land (mostly Ubuntu) are not having any problems at all. They all use Thunderbird and there are no resource or slowing-down problems there. Switching the Windows users to some flavour of Linux is not an option.

So, I’m curious… What do you use on Windows? How has your experience been?

No problems using Thunderbird on Windows so far. Maybe the version you used has a memory leak?
Also try not to sync the complete mailbox with 10 thousands of mails. It is not necessary, search is done server side.

Outlook 2021 is also working fine with EAS, but that seems to be a difficult topic and differs from build versions even within the same major release.
Did you try EM Client?

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    I personally use Thunderbird - IMAP and CalDAV - and have no issues although I am using an older version as I don’t like the 102+ versions (yet). I’ve not seen the memory issues you describe in v91 and below. I’ve just been monitoring it with several accounts active and configured and can’t get it above 1GB of memory usage

    The trick has always been to wean people off of Outlook! I’ve had success doing so with EmClient. It is nice, but I haven’t used it as the ‘daily drive’ for some time.

    You could look at BlueMail for Windows if ActiveSync is important.

    The other solution I quite like is ‘Appify’ Sogo webmail. Use (eg) MS Edge to log into the webmail; select the dropdown menu top right; select Apps; Install this site as an App.

    Pin that to the taskbar. Works a charm once you get used to getting around SOGo webmail (which can be counter-intuitive at times).

    Klaus

    I’m using Outlook (Office 365, 32Bit version) with EAS, no problems at all.

    Here are the version details:

    Microsoft® Outlook® für Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2406 Build 16.0.17726.20078) 32 Bit

    Thanks guys.

    I have had several users try Thunderbird (took much convincing), but even on powerful machines I quickly get complaints about slowdown, and they then send me screenshots like this:

    If I can solve the calendar problems with EAS, that would be preferred.

    I have not tried eM Client.

    Well, EAS is a pain in the ass, as SOGo is just reverse engineering it, and MS with its DevOps model constantly fiddling around with it.
    Supposedly, SOGo will at some point in time be ActiveSync Ver. 16.1 compatible which supposedly will solve some of the issues. However noone knows when this will happen and what MS does inbetween.

    Release notes for Current Channel releases - Office release notes

    learn.microsoft.com
    Release notes for Current Channel releases - Office release notes
    Provides IT Pros with release notes for Monthly Channel releases for Microsoft 365 Apps.
    Microsoft Learn

    We fixed an issue that caused users to be unable to synchronize email with the Exchange ActiveSync protocol.

    Are you at least on this version of Outlook?

    7 days later

    esackbauer

    I’m trying to connect my mailbox to outlook 2021, but something went wrong. From the options of Exchange and Exchange 2013 and below.

    Activesync is connected via oldcfg (but it is not recommended to use it), it is connected via IMAP, but without a calendar and address book.

    How do I connect to outlook 2021 with an address book and calendar?

        leksand What exactly is “oldcfg”? Never heard of it…
        Did you try to set up ActiveSync via Outlook or via control panel? I don’t know about Outlook 2021, but in Outlook 365 you can’t configure EAS with mailcow if you try to set up a new mailbox in Outlook. The workaround is to use the “Mail (32 Bit)” option from the control panel. There you can set up a real EAS account

            DocFraggle What exactly is “oldcfg”?

            He means “olcfg.exe” the legacy configuration tool from control panel

            P.S. The inventor of autocorrection has died. May he restaurant in pieces.

              leksand As I wrote before, never head of oldcfg, is it a 3rd party tool? How did you try to set up EAS before using oldcfg?
              OK, @esackbauer had the answer

                I tried the em client - everything was set up after entering the username and password, without additional effort.

                I gave it to experienced users for testing.

                So far, there have been difficulties in seeing employment in the calendar. I found it in the settings of the web client (sogo) how to make the calendar shared so that other users can see the busy time or free time.

                Question:
                1) Is it possible to make calendar sharing settings for all server/domain users at once?
                2) Is it possible to make users see my (or another user’s) calendar without being able to change something there? Is this possible only by making the calendar shared?

                  leksand Is it possible to make calendar sharing settings for all server/domain users at once?

                  No. Actually that could be a legal or GDPR problem if it would be enabled for all by default.

                  leksand Is it possible to make users see my (or another user’s) calendar without being able to change something there?

                  You have to play around with the settings. By default authenticated (mailcow) users can see date/time of appointments of other users but not any text. Text of appointment would only be visible if you mark your appointment as “public”.
                  You cannot disable calendar sharing, it is always enabled, you just need to define your role based access.

                  You can also look here for default settings, like which category calendar appointments are set to by default:
                  https://www.sogo.nu/files/docs/SOGoInstallationGuide.html#_general_preferences

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