How to Add or Enable Exchange Support in Thunderbird Email Client

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird email client software to send/receive emails and you always wanted to add Exchange support in Thunderbird, this article will help you in enabling built-in Exchange support in Thunderbird without using any 3rd party extension/add-on or app.

Since many years, Thunderbird users were requesting the developer team to include native support for Microsoft Exchange server. Many companies and organizations use Exchange server to manage email accounts. Exchange server is an exclusive protocol developed by Microsoft that is used by many business and organizations.

People who wanted to add Exchange support in Thunderbird, were using 3rd party add-ons such as Owl or 3rd party paid email client applications but those 3rd party solutions were not free.

Due to no built-in support for Exchange server in Thunderbird, users had to use IMAP/POP protocols to access their email accounts using Thunderbird.

Now the good news is that the latest Thunderbird 128.0 ESR and later versions come with built-in or native Exchange support and users can manage and access their email accounts using Exchange server. Thunderbird uses EWS (Exchange Web Services) to provide Exchange support to users.

By default, the Exchange support is not enabled and advanced users are required to manually activate and enable it by modifying a hidden/secret preference or flag in Thunderbird. It’s disabled by default as it’s currently under development and testing phase i.e. pre-beta phase and users can face bugs and issues while using it.

The Exchange support will be enabled for all users in future releases of Thunderbird but if you are an advanced user and want to try Exchange support in Thunderbird right now, following steps will help you:

STEP 1: First of all, if you are using Thunderbird, make sure to update it to the latest version i.e. Thunderbird 128.0 ESR. Version 128.0 is not available for upgrade from previous versions, so you’ll need to manually download and install it from following article:

[Software Update] Thunderbird 128.0 ESR Released, Here is What’s New and Fixed

After downloading the setup installer, run it and it’ll automatically upgrade your old version of Thunderbird to the latest version.

STEP 2: Now launch Thunderbird and click on the Main Menu (3 horizontal lines) icon present at the right-side of the titlebar. Now select Settings option. You can also open Settings page directly by clicking on the cog wheel icon present at the bottom of the left sidebar. Alternatively, you can press ALT key to temporary show Menu bar and then select “Tools -> Settings” option.

STEP 3: It’ll open Thunderbird Options window. Scroll down to bottom and click on the “Config Editor” button given at the bottom of the window.

It’ll open the hidden secret “about:config” page of Thunderbird which is similar to Mozilla Firefox‘s advanced configuration editor page.

STEP 4: Now type .ews in Search filter box and look for following preference in the window:

STEP 5: This preference is set to false by default which means the experimental EWS protocol support is disabled in Thunderbird. To enable the Exchange support, double-click on experimental.mail.ews.enabled preference and change its value to true. Alternatively, you can right-click on the preference and select Toggle option.

That’s it. Restart Thunderbird and the Exchange support will be automatically added in Thunderbird email client program.

Now you can add your email account with Exchange server support in your Thunderbird program using the default account setup wizard.

PS: The current implementation of Exchange support is currently limited to email account setup, and writing, receiving and reading emails. Support to sync calendar, etc will be added in future releases.

Also Check:

[Tip] How to Move Menu Bar at Top in Mozilla Thunderbird

[Tip] Always Show Thunderbird System Tray Icon in Windows Taskbar

POP3, IMAP and SMTP Settings to Configure and Setup Your Email Accounts