I'm looking to deploy a Mac Pro Workstation in an MS Exchange environment. Help would be appreciated

[the6step]

Ok so I am looking to deploy a Mac Pro at the company I currently work for. The company uses XP + Exchange on basically everything. The ideal outcome is to be able to use my Mac Pro like a Mac, but at the same time switch over to VMware fusion, and use outlook to read e-mail from the Exchange server. I need to know any problems I'm going to run into, how easy this would be, and if this is even possible. A colleague (fellow mac user) told me he tried to get a Mac Pro up and running but it wouldn't work for anything (and he is WELL VERSED in Apple, Networking and Hardware).

I can provide more information if you give me some easy steps to obtain said information. Thanks in advance.

[admin]

I use Outlook in a virtual machine - haven't found any other way to deal with setting up and generally dealing with meetings, or creating filter rules. Works fine for me. Mac Pro, OS X 10.4.11, VMware Fusion 1.1.1, XP Pro w/SP2

What sort of problems did your colleague have?

[the6step]

I honestly don't have any idea. I'll ask him for the details later, but the gist of it is that him and another friend of his are MacBook Pro users and they tried to use VMware Fusion and Outlook to connect to the exchange server.

Basically I asked him the same thing I'm asking to you guys, and he told me that he tried it once and didn't have any such luck with it. I'll be sure to ask him the details. The only real piece of information I could give as of right now that could be helpful, is that he tried to do this in the year 2007 so maybe that might be part of the problem but I definitely don't know.

EDIT:

Ok I went down into our garage and it seems like they have Windows Server 2003 running. I'm not sure but I think all of our computers are connected to that somehow. I know a lot about computers and such but networking is definitely not one of my strong points so this is why it's hard for me to figure out.

[the6step]

bump?

[admin]

Why are you bumping this thread?

[the6step]

I figure there has to be more than 1 person who Used VMware Fusion to use Microsoft Exchange w/Outlook. I was hoping that more people who have used it would chime in, or something. I have not been able to find anything on google, and looking through the VMware Fusion category, I haven't seen the question of Microsoft Exchange + VMware Fusion asked even once.

[asatoran]

The reason you're not getting much answers is because like Eric said, many of the features you'd expect from Outlook/Exchange are simply not available on Mac. I've been using Exchange since Exchange 5.5 and Outlook 97 (Windows) and Outlook 98 (Mac OS8.) While the "personal folder" features were mostly there, the collaboration features were non-existant or not fully functional (compared to the Windows Outlook.) Even Outlook Web Access does not have some features that Outlook has, and MS admits as much. (Their knowledgebase says to use Outlook to perform those missing features. ) IOW, just connecting to Exchange is not enough. MS says you may need Outlook to be able to utilize 100% of the features of Exchange. You may not need those features, but basically, that's the simple version of the answer.

I haven't tried the current Entourage 2008 in Office 2008 for Mac, but you know that all previous versions were lacking when MS says "improved Exchange support" In Entourage 2008. :smileysilly: I had VirtualPC for Mac to run Win98 and Outlook and didn't really have any problem, until I upgraded my OS and the version of VPC wasn't compatible. I then started using the old Outlook 98 for Mac. As expected, it did not have the feature found in Outlook so I ended up having to have someone else do those things for me until I was able to get a old PC

to run as a headless WinXP machine. I then RDP into that just to run

Outlook.

Now with Fusion and Unity, I run Outlook 2007. Unity gives me the solution without having to wait for MS to get the Mac version caught up to the Windows version. So I know I have the same capabilities (Outlook-wise) as my coworkers. To address your co-worker's comment about not getting Exchange access in Fusion, this works fine for me and I've also run various versions of Outlook virtualized on VMWare Workstation and Server. (Current setups are Exchange 2003, Outlook 2007 on Vista in Fusion, Outlook 2007 on XP-pro in Workstation, Outlook 2003 on Win2k in Server.) Perhaps he was using NAT instead of bridged networking?

Anyway, If there are people with successful alternative methods to Exchange access on OSX, I'm sure that we all would be interested. (I know I am.) But from my experince, I do not know how else you can get the full functionality of Exchange without Outlook.

[ewing47 · Accepted solution]

Like others have said, I don't have a problem with Exchange 2003, Lookout!...Outlook 2003, Fusion 1.1, Win. XP SP2. Setup as Outlook with the same settings as my Windows PC at work, and it works just the same. Only "issue" that I deal with (system wide) is the fact that my username & password in Fusion is different from my work username & password. I don't have XP setup in Fusion to say log into the work domain with my username & password -- and I don't really feel like adding another user or having stuff sync to my VM.

So when I have to enter the work username & password when opening Outlook -- there's a setting to force that option. I have to do that for shares (sometimes with the domain), but you can tell Windows to memorize them for shares.

That said, I did ask our IT guy to help me setup and install some company applications. There may have been an issue with making me a member of one of the workgroups in XP. But I don't think that affected Outlook, which I'm pretty sure I setup by myself before doing do. Sorry don't remember, I'm good on Macs and a freaking idiot on Windows.

We also have Outlook webmail enabled at work, so I actually end up using that more than anything. I can do the bulk of what I need with webmail in Firefox. The Outlook webmail interface is more rubust (more Outlook like) only with IE Windows, so there are some limitations when using a browser in OS X, e.g. trying to browse say folders with 100s of contacts, mail, etc; as well as do rich text emails. But basic things like plain emailing, appointment creation & acceptance work just fine when using a browser in OS X.

[the6step]

EXCELLENT answer ewing, that was the exact response I was looking (and hoping) for. I am going to start getting my mac ready for my workplace, all based on that answer.

EDIT: Wow I am sorry Astorian, your answer is the one I wanted, I don't know how I mixed that up. I will make sure to ask another question to make sure you get the best answer for it.

[asatoran]

EDIT: Wow I am sorry Astorian, your answer is the one I wanted, I don't know how I mixed that up. I will make sure to ask another question to make sure you get the best answer for it.

Not a problem. I'm not worried about the points...much! 😛

Use whatever works for you. I use OWA when I'm not at my computer(s) and I've come across a few limitations. I can get most of my work done, but I have to make a note to myself to redo the recurring task or whatever. But most of the time I try to use Outlook (IE used to be a more reasonable solution when IE was included in MacOS. Maybe you'll want to try ies4osx.)

[ewing47]

EDIT: Wow I am sorry Astorian, your answer is the one I wanted, I don't know how I mixed that up. I will make sure to ask another question to make sure you get the best answer for it.

Ah, now I feel bad -- like a kid in elementary school whose teacher walks by and removes the little star on my homework and says, "Sorry, my mistake; I need to take that back".

I'm joking of course. Astorian's reply was excellent, and he has the sweet crown too.

Seriously, although I use Fusion, I actually try to avoid firing it as much as possible. I guess that's why the limitations of OWA in non-Windows IE doesn't usually bother me. In fact, I hadn't noticed that OWA is more robust in IE until I saw on someone else's computer.