5 ms·

Is anyone successfully using Thunderbird with Office 365 + Google for calendars and mail? I've found various plugins but never got both working consistently for

Is anyone successfully using Thunderbird with Office 365 + Google for calendars and mail? I've found various plugins but never got both working consistently for both services. Imap, caldav, etc. are a breeze but unfortunately work requirements mean I need to use the two big non-standards.

als0 6y ago
It's sad that 365 support is made by various independent projects who aren't working together to make a library that every mail client can take advantage of.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
I am using TBSync for Office 365. It only works one way. Events in my O365 calendar show up in my TB calendar, but not vice versa. RSVP doesn't also work right now from the TB calendar. Author claims he might fix it by the end of the year.
- jaster 6y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, I just tried it and it seems perfect! Contrary to your experience, I was even able to create events from thunderbird that would show up on O365. They only show up on sync however (which does not seems to be automatic, only on timer). Maybe that's the reason why it did not appear to work for you?
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    There might have been updates. I haven't tried in a while - I have to use the Meeting Scheduler in O365 to set up any meetings that I do.
danmur 6y ago
I use "owl for exchange". It's not free but it's very cheap and I've found it to work perfectly.
bratch 6y ago
For Office 365 I use DavMail [0] for calendar, and Office 365's own SMTP/IMAP servers for mail. Both seem to work well. It would be nice to have DavMail built in to Thunderbird, but it happily lives in a Screen session with no issues. [0] http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
sketyl 6y ago
Not Thunderbird but I use DavMail to access Office 365 mails and calendars from Kmail. It has been a really smooth experience for the 6 months I have been using it. Not affiliated in any way, just a happy user.
fsiefken 6y ago
Yes, I use 81.0b3 (64-bit) which has OAuth2 support for Office365 authentication (the other authentication methods are switched off. I use a Google Calendar tab plugin for the calendaring, it's not builtin, but it works.
livre 6y ago
I use it with Office 365 but I don't use the calendar or Google so I don't know if those things work or not. I used to use Davmail but now I just connect to it using IMAP and it works (finally no more Exchange which was a big annoyance).
Thin_icE 6y ago
I tried to use it with TBSync, endured some bugs that I managed to work around, until one day that it simply stopped syncing. I switched to Evolution and it works perfectly. I miss thunderbird everyday, though.
- rstuart4133 6y ago
  I've been a long time Evolution user (decades, literally). But the bugs; particularly in the mail composer. So many bugs. And a lot of dependence on how Gnome does things, like online accounts. I swear some Gnome libraries have a lifetime of split milk, and when they change everything breaks. So now I've moved to Thunderbird. I've already come across a fair few bugs in Thunderbird. And as you say sync'ing calendars with Google is one of them. Only being able the use Google Calendar with the GMail account sharing the same email address is a complete PITA, making it unsuitable for many applications. Thunderbirds dependence on Firefox, and the current rapid internal refactoring Firefox is undergoing combine to break things even faster than Gnome. So, bug and stability wise they seem to be on par. (Lord, how I look forward to Firefox/Mozilla getting past this period. I realise it's necessary, they are doing their best to reduce the pain and what pain remains must simply be endured. But enduring it is hard.) Feature wise, both Evolution and Thunderbird both are very mature and equally capable. Many of the deficiencies in both arise from the proprietary providers (Google, Microsoft, ...) continually changing how they do things, and in Microsoft's case gratuitously making interoperability difficult. As for the Windows Outlook client - pfft. I was asked to help a work colleague a month or two ago. During the move of data from the old machine to the new one some part of Windows (perhaps Defender?) announced a file contained copyrighted material and deleted it. The file happened to be the .PST containing his pop3 data. After getting past that a week or two later it refused to start. It announced Windows was running low on resources, then exited. I last saw that message 25 years ago, when Outlook was the only choice. The only solution was a complete uninstall (which of course Microsoft's installer doesn't know how to do, so it must be done manually, stumbling around in the dark), and clean install. Nothing has changed. Whereas the open source clients do their best to interoperate with everything (albeit with mixed success), Microsoft appears to go out of their way to make their users' lives difficult if they try to use Outlook with anything bar Microsoft servers (online or Exchange). The corporate world would be far better off collectively getting behind someone like RedHat, Ubuntu or the Apache foundation, and developing something whose primary goal was to do the job they need done well, not extract money from them. It’s not like it’s a mind boggling difficult job.

als0 6y ago

It's sad that 365 support is made by various independent projects who aren't working together to make a library that every mail client can take advantage of.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

I am using TBSync for Office 365. It only works one way. Events in my O365 calendar show up in my TB calendar, but not vice versa. RSVP doesn't also work right now from the TB calendar. Author claims he might fix it by the end of the year.

jaster 6y ago
Thanks for the recommendation, I just tried it and it seems perfect! Contrary to your experience, I was even able to create events from thunderbird that would show up on O365. They only show up on sync however (which does not seems to be automatic, only on timer). Maybe that's the reason why it did not appear to work for you?
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  There might have been updates. I haven't tried in a while - I have to use the Meeting Scheduler in O365 to set up any meetings that I do.

danmur 6y ago

I use "owl for exchange". It's not free but it's very cheap and I've found it to work perfectly.

bratch 6y ago

For Office 365 I use DavMail [0] for calendar, and Office 365's own SMTP/IMAP servers for mail. Both seem to work well. It would be nice to have DavMail built in to Thunderbird, but it happily lives in a Screen session with no issues. [0] http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/

sketyl 6y ago

Not Thunderbird but I use DavMail to access Office 365 mails and calendars from Kmail. It has been a really smooth experience for the 6 months I have been using it. Not affiliated in any way, just a happy user.

fsiefken 6y ago

Yes, I use 81.0b3 (64-bit) which has OAuth2 support for Office365 authentication (the other authentication methods are switched off. I use a Google Calendar tab plugin for the calendaring, it's not builtin, but it works.

livre 6y ago

I use it with Office 365 but I don't use the calendar or Google so I don't know if those things work or not. I used to use Davmail but now I just connect to it using IMAP and it works (finally no more Exchange which was a big annoyance).

Thin_icE 6y ago

I tried to use it with TBSync, endured some bugs that I managed to work around, until one day that it simply stopped syncing. I switched to Evolution and it works perfectly. I miss thunderbird everyday, though.

rstuart4133 6y ago
I've been a long time Evolution user (decades, literally). But the bugs; particularly in the mail composer. So many bugs. And a lot of dependence on how Gnome does things, like online accounts. I swear some Gnome libraries have a lifetime of split milk, and when they change everything breaks. So now I've moved to Thunderbird. I've already come across a fair few bugs in Thunderbird. And as you say sync'ing calendars with Google is one of them. Only being able the use Google Calendar with the GMail account sharing the same email address is a complete PITA, making it unsuitable for many applications. Thunderbirds dependence on Firefox, and the current rapid internal refactoring Firefox is undergoing combine to break things even faster than Gnome. So, bug and stability wise they seem to be on par. (Lord, how I look forward to Firefox/Mozilla getting past this period. I realise it's necessary, they are doing their best to reduce the pain and what pain remains must simply be endured. But enduring it is hard.) Feature wise, both Evolution and Thunderbird both are very mature and equally capable. Many of the deficiencies in both arise from the proprietary providers (Google, Microsoft, ...) continually changing how they do things, and in Microsoft's case gratuitously making interoperability difficult. As for the Windows Outlook client - pfft. I was asked to help a work colleague a month or two ago. During the move of data from the old machine to the new one some part of Windows (perhaps Defender?) announced a file contained copyrighted material and deleted it. The file happened to be the .PST containing his pop3 data. After getting past that a week or two later it refused to start. It announced Windows was running low on resources, then exited. I last saw that message 25 years ago, when Outlook was the only choice. The only solution was a complete uninstall (which of course Microsoft's installer doesn't know how to do, so it must be done manually, stumbling around in the dark), and clean install. Nothing has changed. Whereas the open source clients do their best to interoperate with everything (albeit with mixed success), Microsoft appears to go out of their way to make their users' lives difficult if they try to use Outlook with anything bar Microsoft servers (online or Exchange). The corporate world would be far better off collectively getting behind someone like RedHat, Ubuntu or the Apache foundation, and developing something whose primary goal was to do the job they need done well, not extract money from them. It’s not like it’s a mind boggling difficult job.