Can IMAP clients read my contacts from Office 365?

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I'm using a Mac. I'm using Postbox as my email client (which is actually Mozilla Thunderbird under the hood). I'm connecting to my email that is hosted in Office 365 via IMAP.

Email works great.

What I want to do is to sync my contacts from Office 365 to this machine via IMAP. Is that possible?

I know that the iPhone and Mac Mail app have native exchange abilities - but I'm asking about other IMAP clients and office 365 working together. Has anyone had to deal with this?

Ken Shaw

Posted 2014-08-23T00:14:29.830

Reputation: 303

No; your contacts are shared over an entirely different protocol – Ramhound – 2014-08-23T00:21:55.517

IMAP doesn't synch contacts or calenders, IMAP synchs mail folders only. checking the FAQ's for postbox you appear to be out of luck. http://www.postbox-inc.com/faq#exchange

– Tyson – 2014-08-23T02:24:53.097

Answers

20

You can set it up using Thunderbird if IMAP is enabled in your account settings on Office365 it just requires a few add-ons for everything to work correctly.

Download Required Extensions:

Lightning: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/projects/calendar/

Ericsson Exchange 2007/2010/2013 Calendar, Tasks, Contacts and GAL Provider: https://github.com/Ericsson/exchangecalendar/releases

Restart Thunderbird

Configure Email Settings:

Configure IMAP

IMAP server:    outlook.office365.com
IMAP port:      993
IMAP user:      id@domain.com
IMAP security:  SSL/TLS

Configure SMTP

SMTP server:    smtp.office365.com
SMTP port:      587
SMTP user:      id@domain.com
SMTP auth:      Normalpassword
SMTP security:  STARTTLS

Configure Office365 Global Address Book:

Open the address book and click “Add Exchange contact folder” in the menu bar

Enter the following configuration

Name:                 Office365 Contacts
Refresh:              3600
Add list to search:   Checked
Use autodiscovery:    Unchecked
Server URL:           https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx
Primary email:        id@domain.com
Username:             id@domain.com
Domain:               'n/a'
Share Folder Id:      'blank'

Press the “Check server and mailbox” button, it should populate “Folder base: Contacts folder” and set the Path for you

Press Save

Configure Office365 Calendar/Tasks:

Open Thunderbird File > New > Calendar Select “On the Network” Select “Microsoft Exchange 2007/2010/2013” Set calendar display settings and attach it to the configured Office365 email account (usually eid@siue.edu) Enter the following configuration:

Autodiscovery:            Unchecked
Server URL:               https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx
Primary email address:    id@domain.com
Username:                 id@domain.com
Share Folder Id:          'blank'

Press the “Check server and mailbox” button, it should populate “Folder base: Calendar folder” and set the Path for you

Press Save

Andrew

Posted 2014-08-23T00:14:29.830

Reputation: 371

Wonderful! I googled the world over for the url for the exchange server! – bgmCoder – 2016-03-09T21:51:23.190

Any clue as to how to set up the Instantbird chat client? http://superuser.com/questions/1050850/what-are-the-settings-for-instantbirds-office-communicator-and-owa

– bgmCoder – 2016-03-09T23:30:37.980

1I wish I could upvote you more, I have been looking for this solution off and on for months now!!! – Logos – 2016-04-11T18:14:31.457

The Office365 Global Address Book is readonly? Is it possible to add or edit contacts there? And share with colleagues? – tholu – 2016-04-27T10:09:31.690

Thoulu - from everything I've seen you have to add them on the Office365 webapp first unfortunately. – Andrew – 2016-05-02T15:10:56.330

3

Note that the exchange plugin mentioned has issues and has not been updated. However, a fork exists that works great: https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/

– HRJ – 2017-07-08T06:43:18.273

Asked: 2014-08-23T00:14:29.830

Viewed: 12 518 times

Active: 2019-06-24T16:47:55.403