OT: mac mail and exchange

Hi All, I know this is totally off-topic, but I also know there are a few network adminitrators out there who read this so I thought you might be able to help!

We run a dual machine office- PCs and Macs with a Windows Server 2003 machine dealing with the mail and file storage and stuff.

Recently we updated the Macs to Mac Book Pros and I've been having a lot of fun trying to get Mac Mail to work properly with the exchange server. When I set up the accounts I choose the Exchange option (as opposed to IMAP or POP) and run through the account settings, which all seems to work fine. I'm using our external access address for the mail server so that wherever you are you can get to the mail - on the LAN or on a WAN.

However, we've found it to be very intermittent, with sent mails dissapearing (they're set to store on the server), deleted messages mysteriously coming back and very slow initial log in.

Can anyone help me with settings, either on the Windows server or ont he Mac's? I've tried using Thunderbird from Mozilla, and I have to say it seems to run pretty well, but there is some reluctance to move away from Mac Mail. Is my only option to run the accounts using POP?

Thanks in advance, Lee

How is the performance from outside the network? Are your internal and external exchange server names the same... as in exchange.mycompany.com? If not... then you probably need to create an alias on your internal dns server that points the externally registered name to the internal server.

For instance... if the server addres you're using is mail.mycompany.com, but the actual name of the server is exchange.mycompany.com, then you need a pointer on your dns server that points mail -> exchange.mycompany.com. That way, computers inside the network don't need to go outside the network to resolve the server name and then continue to use that path (as there isn't an internally defined path) to continue to access the server.

I hope this helps...

Eric