Using Exchange 2007 calendar with Thunderbird plugin

Electric calendars are good for sharing information between multiple devices, like home and work computers, mobile phones and colleagues. One solution to do this is to use Microsoft's Exchange server, among the alternatives Zimbra collaborative suite does pretty much the same thing and is compatible with Outlook clients.

For Linux users, the options so far have been to use Outlook Web Access (OWA) light version with limited capabilities, or use virtualization either on the computer or a separate server to run a separate Outlook or IE client for calendar intaraction in Exchange environments.

Here are the steps required to use an Exchange 2007 or newer calendar with Thunderbird:

1. Install at least Thunderbird 3.0. Windows users can download it here, Linux users should use their distribution repositories if possible (like apt-get install thunderbird or yum install thunderbird)
2. Install the lightning calendar plugin. Again, linux users should first check their repositories.
   
   • If you need a 64 bit version for Linux, there's a contributed build.
3. Install the provider for Microsoft Exchange plugin
   
   1. In Thunderbird, choose "Tools / Add Ons", then "Install.." and pick the downloaded file
   2. Restart Thunderbird
4. Open the calendar, on the left under the "Home" entry, right click and choose "New Calendar.."
5. Choose "On the Network", then "Microsoft Exchange" and type the string in this form: https://domain\youracc@mail.server.fi/EWS/Exchange.asmx
   
   • For example, if my exchange mail server is at mails.company.fi, and my user domain is comp and username tester, I'd use the url https://comp\tester@mails.company.fi/EWS/Exchange.asmx

The finished install will look something like this:

For Exchange 2003, there's a plugin for Evolution called owa-connector that allows calendar access. Because the OWA structure changed in recent Exchange versions, it won't work with them.

PS: There's also a lightning provider for Google calendar.