The exchange server of GWDG allows for accessing mail, contacts, calendar, reminders, and notes. Instructions on how to setup your particular client can be found in the corresponding documentation. However for technical reasons imposed by our IT Service, slight modifications are needed. Here is how (screenshots in German localisation):

Apple Mail on macOS

  • Open the Internet Accounts control panel of System Settings. Click Add Account…

  • Enter an e-mail address with a non-existing domain, like for example test-seifert@cpfs.mpg.huhu and choose Microsoft Exchange as provider.

  • Enter your name, leave the wrong e-mail address, click Sign In…

  • Click Configure Manually.

  • Leave the wrong e-mail address, type some characters in the Password field and click Sign In.

  • In the next dialog, actually the most important one, enter your correct e-mail address, your username which is your primary e-mail address, your GWDG password. The internal and external URL both read https://email.gwdg.de/ews/exchange.asmx

  • As a last step, choose the Apps you want to use with your account.

Microsoft Outlook on macOS

  • Open the Microsoft Outlook app and choose Accounts… from the Tools menu in the menu bar.

  • Click Add Email Account.

  • Enter an e-mail address with a non-existing domain, like for example bs@cpfs.mpg.huhu and click Continue…, then choose Exchange.

  • Enter the correct e-mail address, your name, your username which is your primary e-mail address, your GWDG password. The server name is required and reads email.gwdg.de (leave https:// in the popup menu).

  • Click Add Account, then click Done.

Danger: wrong Autodiscover

We are not yet completely done. While Autodiscover with Microsoft Exchange can be great, our institute has a rather difficult Exchange setup. This can wreak havoc on Outlook’s Autodiscover feature, so we need to disable that. (We already worked around this when initially entering a wrong e-mail address.) To disable Autodiscover, close Outlook completely, open Terminal, and run the follwing command:

osascript -e 'tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
	set background autodiscover of exchange account "AccountName" to false
end tell'

Be sure to change AccountName to the name you gave your Internet account in Outlook. After you hit enter to run it, you can close Terminal and reopen Outlook. Autodiscover will now be disabled so whatever server settings you put in, will stay. Courtesy to ITCMS GmbH

Mozilla Thunderbird

The GWDG configuration instructions can be used as they are. Screenshots are taken with an older version of the application, however the important things like username, protocol names, server address, port numbers, encryption protocols are still correct.

Don’t know your Active Directory user ID? As above you can use your primary e-mail address as a valid username.

Important: when setting up e-mail, at the very last step Thunderbird tries to be nice and find your address book and calendar as well. This will take forever, so please just close the corresponding dialog.

CalDAV, CardDAV, and LDAP support for calendar and addresses meanwhile is integrated into Thunderbird, the plugins mentioned on the GWDG page are not necessary anymore. Instead proceed setting up three additonal accounts (one each for calendar, personal address book, and global address book) using GWDG’s DavMail service.