Microsoft Exchange is a popular choice of email service for corporations and educational institutions, and so it’s no surprise that there’s demand

Adventures In Rust: Bringing Exchange Support To Thunderbird

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2024-04-19 19:00:08

Microsoft Exchange is a popular choice of email service for corporations and educational institutions, and so it’s no surprise that there’s demand among Thunderbird users to support Exchange. Until recently, this functionality was only available through an add-on. But, in the next ESR (Extended Support) release of Thunderbird in July 2024, we expect to provide this support natively within Thunderbird. Because of the size of this undertaking, the first roll-out of the Exchange support will initially cover only email, with calendar and address book support coming at a later date.

This article will go into technical detail on how we are implementing support for the Microsoft Exchange Web Services mail protocol, and some idea of where we’re going next with the knowledge gained from this adventure.

Before we dive in, just a quick note that Brendan Abolivier, Ikey Doherty, and Sean Burke are the developers behind this effort, and are the authors of this post.