Outlook 2007 Doesn't Work with Exchange 5.5

Not that I'm really very surprised but Outlook 2007 will not connect to Exchange 5.5. I found a note about this on the TechNet Forums:

"Microsoft continuously strives to provide a consistent and predictable end-of-life-cycle experience for all of its products.  In accordance with standard Microsoft life-cycle policies Exchange 5.5 ended extended life-cycle support on January 10, 2006.  As a result, Outlook 2007 will not support Exchange 5.5.  Because neither the Outlook or Exchange team is supporting this combination we will not discover and/or fix issues that crop up as the result of innovations in both products .  Rather than subjecting customers to potential serious issues like data loss or frequent server downtime we choose to prevent Outlook from connecting to these older and now unsupported servers.  Our research has shown that there is a relatively small set of customers who want to upgrade their desktops to the latest and greatest versions of Office and run server technology as old as Exchange 5.5.  There are clearly exceptions but they don't seem to be the norm."

Something to keep in mind if, like me, you need to connect to an Exchange 5.5 email server.

10 Comments

  • it work but you have to configure your outlook 2007 manually with IMAP. but still problem with synchronizing with contacts.

  • Yes, thats true, you can configure outlook 2007 like IMAP, is not a solution but you can work intill you buy Exange 2008 xP

  • We're not the norm either. Luckily we purchased only one copy of office 2007 for testing and it does not work with our Exchange 5.5 server. Our future plans now do not include exchange server anyhow. We are going to Linux, probably something like Zimbra.

  • Well, I guess I'm not the "norm" either. I JUST purchased OL 2007. They SHOULD have warned on the DL page. Guess I'm calling to have them take it back and go back to OL 2000. Pity, Seemed like a nice version but NOT going to spend big $$ right now on Exchange 2007.

  • Well, Guess I'm stuck with a non useable version of Outlook 2007 :-(. No refunds (even if it's useless to me!). Does anyone know what the "oldest" version of Exchange Server that Outlook 2007 will work on? Exchange 2000? 2003? 2008? is there a 2000 exchange server? I'm just on a fishing expedition to see if I can afford to upgrade to an exch server that will work with my newly aquired OL 2007 without breaking my bank.

  • One last quick question. is there anyway to "force" OL2007 to work with Exchange server 5.5 and take my chances? As above stated:

    "Rather than subjecting customers to potential serious issues like data loss or frequent server downtime we choose to prevent Outlook from connecting to these older and now unsupported servers."

    Maybe there's a way to "unprevent" the connection rather than waste $107.00 on a useless OL copy.

  • I'm out of the norm too I guess. Outlook 2003 will not run on Windows 7 and Outlook 2007 which runs on Windows 7, will not attach to exchange server 5.5. Pretty slick trick if you ask me...

  • Does anyone know "for sure" if Outlook 2007 works "normally" with Exchange 2000? I found a source for Exchange Server 2000 for a decent price and may upgrade AS LONG AS IT WORKS :-) Thanks.

  • может у кого нить есть ещё информация по этому поводу??

  • Wow! I could not even guess about it)) Not bad.

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