Exchange Calendar Sync

From Applied Optics Wiki
Revision as of 13:01, 20 October 2016 by Ral (talk | contribs) (Update for Office365)

Jump to: navigation, search

Back to Linux How-tos

See also Getting Email Working and Exchange Global Address Book

Syncing University of Nottingham Office 365 Calendar to Thunderbird + Lightning

Works under Thunderbird from at least version 45, but definitely earlier versions as well. Lightning version from at least 4.7 onwards. This needs the Exchange EWS Provider at least version 3.8.0.

From within Thunderbird, go to Tools --> Add-ons. Search for and install Lightning then restart Thunderbird. Get the Exchange plugin directly from the link: https://github.com/Ericsson/exchangecalendar/releases. You should download (right click and save as) the latest version unless you have a reason to get an older version. In Thunderbird Tools->Addons, click the Spanner and "Install Add-On from File...". Select the above, let it install and restart.

You should now have an extra panel down the right hand side of your Thunderbird window, with today's date at the top. There is also an extra "Events and Tasks" menu... from there, select "Calendar" and a new tab will open. On the left there is a monthly calendar, underneath that is the word "Calendar" and probably the word "Home". Right click somewhere in the empty space below that, and select "New Calendar..."

  • Select "On the Network", click "Next"
  • Select "Microsoft Exchange 2007/2010/2013", click "Next"
  • Give your calendar a name, e.g. "Work calendar" or "Exchange calendar"
  • Make sure the correct email address is shown, e.g. "firstname.lastname@nottingham.ac.uk" and not one of the other email addresses you might have set up Thunderbird for (like gmail). Click "Next"
  • Select "Microsoft Office365"
  • For "Primary email address" enter your email address, e.g. first.lastname@nottingham.ac.uk
  • For "Username" enter: eexzzz@ad.nottingham.ac.uk (but obviously, replace eexzzz with your own username)
  • Leave "Domain name" blank
  • Leave "Share FolderId" blank
  • Click "Check server and mailbox" which should by now have appeared. You will be asked for your username and password. Use ad\eexzzz for your username (it should already be correctly populated)
  • If successful, then straight away a couple more fields will appear, with values already selected: "Folderbase" (which says "Calendar folder") and "Path below folderbase" (which says "/"). Leave these alone.
  • Click "Next", then "Finish"
  • Your calendar should be created. It may take a short while for any existing events to be loaded.

That's it! Have a play around, it's fairly intuitive.

You can set up a Tasks calendar in the same way but by choosing "Tasks folder" instead of "Calendar folder" for "Folderbase".

A further possibility is viewing calendars belonging to other people. To do this, use the primary email address of the person you want to see, but keep all other fields the same. This will allow you to see when someone is busy, but not what they are doing. It is possible to grant full visibility to another person through outlook, but I don't know how to do that in Thunderbird. ~~ Roger