From a recent email sent by our IT Services:

You

may know that Microsoft recently made an announcement extending their

support for IMAP with basic (legacy) authentication on Office 365, from

October 2020 to sometime in the “second half of 2021”, with a more

precise date still to be confirmed.

[...]

The

University’s Information Governance Office (IGO) has now approved the

extended use of IMAP, and IT Services are currently security testing

Office 365 with IMAP and OAuth 2.0 (modern) authentication. Once this is

sufficiently tested it will be made available as quickly as possible.

 So it looks as if the Linux community may have forced a temporary reprieve, and maybe we Windows users of PMail will be able to get back in on their coat-tails.

best

David

My university has just migrated my mailbox from MS Exchange to MS Office 365. One of the FAQs says that IMAP will no longer be possible, 'as Microsoft will no longer be supporting IMAP from October'. Does this mean the end of my long-running use of Pegasus? A real downer if so.

I have a large PMail folder stored on my PC rather than the server with many years' worth of non-academic emails. Any suggestions about how best to keep these emails usable? Thanks.

David

Maybe DavMail is the tool you need, pretty easy to set up.

David,

  Do you have a link to FAQ you are looking at regarding IMAP please. Any hint that POP3 still viable?  I have just uninstalled Office 365 as it does nothing for me. Back to LibreOffice.

Martin 

Hello Martin. Thanks for your interest. I agree about Office 365 but have no choice.

The FAQs are on our StaffNet and almost certainly not publicly available. There is no mention of POP3. For Linux users (of whom I am not one) they say this: 'Colleagues that currently use IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)

should note that they will no longer be able to use this for University

email, as Microsoft will no longer be supporting IMAP from October.

Instead, you will be able to use Evolution, a modern authentication

email client which does not require the legacy protocol and therefore is

much more secure and longer lasting. This is currently available and

the appropriate package for your machine can be downloaded from the

internet.'

To continue to access University email on my Android phone, I've had to give the IT department permission to wipe my phone, turn off its camera, and goodness knows what else, if they see fit. They are terrified of University emails getting outside their closed network, disclosing some confidential info about someone, and making them liable to a claim under the GDPR. But I have been using my univ email for 40 years, long before GMail, and I had and still have a lot of non-university-related mails coming in. I never used full Outlook on Exchange or now on Office 365 except to make backups (now in theory no longer accessible to me!), and mainly used Pegasus, sometimes the Outlook app in a browser for its excellent search), and my phone. Since this morning it's just Outlook in a browser or the Android mail app, as I won't use the infuriatingly locked-down copy of Outlook 2016 on my managed PC.

As for the local mail folder on my C: drive, I can still see that in Pegasus in offline mode but can't add to it, so I'm looking for a way to migrate its contents to my GMail account.

best

David

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/end-of-support-for-basic-authentication-access-to-exchange-online-apis-for-office-365-customers/

I can only repeat myself, David, take a look at DavMail, it works as a "proxy" for accessing Office 365 via Pegasus Mail through IMAP, POP3 and SMTP, here's its self description:

Ever wanted to get rid of Outlook ? DavMail is a POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP exchange

gateway allowing users to use any mail/calendar client (e.g. Thunderbird with Lightning or

Apple iCal) with an Exchange server, even from the internet or behind a firewall through

Outlook Web Access.

DavMail now includes an LDAP gateway to Exchange global address book and user personal

contacts to allow recipient address completion in mail compose window and full calendar

support with attendees free/busy display.

I've been using it in a similar way until a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks, Michael. I did briefly use DavMail on a previous PC. Have downloaded it now but am having difficulty setting it up properly.

D

[quote user="David_himself"]Have downloaded it now but am having difficulty setting it up properly.[/quote]

Take a look at the settings I use, you need to figure out the proper https://... address yourself, of course. It's usually the same one you use for web access. Port numbers are more or less arbitrary. In Pegasus Mail you need to configure your POP/SMTP/IMAP ports using these numbers. The server host name is always localhost. Username and password are the ones you're using for web access as well. It's important to disable all SSL/TLS options since Pegasus Mail is only talking to DavMail - which uses proper security settings when connecting to the remote server as required.

 HIH

You have posted to a forum that requires a moderator to approve posts before they are publicly available.

If the administrator has configured this forum to support email notifications you will receive an email when your post is either approved or denied (if you have emails enabled in your profile).

i posted yesterday and today a link from the microsoft developer forum about basic auth and IMAP...

I suggest you read the article about demise of IMAP at Microsoft: https://office365itpros.com/2020/03/03/basic-authentication-exchange-online-so-bad/

There seems to be some dispute about the actual date for IMAP shutdown. Very recent Google articles are putting strike-through on the actual date, as Microsoft is taking the user feedback in consideration. The only good news appears to be that OWA will continue to provide a browser based client.

Martin 

Clarification:   the basic authentication in IMAP is still ending on October 20, 2020. So allowing users to login to MsExchange using IMAP (SMTP, and POP) will need to be updated or replaced to support OAuth2.  The issue for external users is that there are many implementations of POP, IMAP and SMTP that are fully functional as-is, that will need to be updated to allow access to Microsoft services such as MsExchange.  For work from home this will mean the PCs, laptops, tablets etc must me updated and functional to be useful. With COVID active this will demand a large community of external users prepare ahead of time.

Martin 

Take a look at the settings I use, you need to figure out the proper

https://... address yourself, of course. It's usually the same one you

use for web access. Port numbers are more or less arbitrary. In Pegasus

Mail you need to configure your POP/SMTP/IMAP ports using these numbers.

The server host name is always localhost. Username and password are the ones you're using for web access as well. It's important to disable

all SSL/TLS options since Pegasus Mail is only talking to DavMail -

which uses proper security settings when connecting to the remote server

as required.

Thanks again, Michael. Tried this. No go. I'm pretty sure the IT dept have blocked EWS access.

D

David,

   I have been struggling with trying to get an understanding of OAuth2 etc, and from my 30,000 foot view, it seems like Microsoft (and others) are trying to implement end-to-end encryption and validation. It seems that every external user who wants to connect with MsExchange has to pre-register with a MS Authorization service.  And then a key is supplied by Microsoft, which must be used for any communication with MsExchange.   Deja Vu.....   This seems like the setup used by Private/Public key encryption (Eg PGP or GPG), and once the keys (aka certificates) are established, all can continue. But if the user changes email address or other personal details, then a new Key/Certificate must be generated. This is by way of revocation of the existing key and creation of a new key.  

I also just came across a Microsoft article that defines the way MS GRAPH is going to use OAuth2. Boy, if you want a good sleeping pill, try reading up about that !! 

It seems to me that if Microsoft want to communicate with its user community this would mean multiple millions of keys need to be generated and maintained. 

Thank you for food for thought, and I hope this mess will get delayed until a half-decent document can be created by Microsoft to explain to regular users what they are intending .

Regards

     Martin 

I am currently using Office 365 and Pegasus in parallel.  This is achieved by our business having all incoming emails pass through an external spam filter, Mimecast.  The Office 365 server downloads the emails from Mimecast in bulk in some way I don't understand, but Mimecast also holds the emails available for me to fetch in Pegasus via a POP3 check (as I have been doing for the past 24 years).  So I see the same emails whether I open Pegasus or Office 365 - there's a copy of every email in both places.  It's also handy for those times in Pegasus when I accidentally delete an email (it's way too easy to press the Delete key).

 Maybe not the most efficient to have everything duplicated, but it means that all my email continues to be available in Pegasus, which is useful as I have discussions going back years which I sometimes need to look at, so good to have everything in one place, and also I just prefer Pegasus overall.

 It also allows for direct feature comparisons between Pegasus and Outlook:

 - the Outlook UI sucks, personally I find it difficult to conceivehow a company which purports to be the global specialist in user-friendly business software ever came up with anything like this (I've discussed this directly with a friend who works for MS as part of the Office 365 team, he said "the majority of our users say they like the ribbon";  I suggested that the users who say they like it may not have been shown anything else to compare it to?)

- Outlook by default hides some of your emails, due to 'Focus view', though the algorithm it uses to choose what to hide is not clear

- Outlook doesn't offer the basic feature of being able to sort your Inbox by sender or subject, instead of by date - I have always liked the way a Pegasus mail folder view, is very similar to viewing a folder full of files