South West Data Networks Ltd

PROVIDING COMPUTER NETWORK SUPPORT FOR SMALL BUSINESS

From a single user up to 75, we can supply, install and maintain your computer network, making sure you can keep on working at your business without the headaches of sorting out faulty or misbehaving IT equipment and without the cost of full time in house IT staff.

Setting up Outlook for remote connection to Exchange

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Please note that this guide is specifically for connecting Outlook to an Exchange server running on Microsoft Small Business Server. Many of the steps will not be relevant for other Windows server based systems.

The steps to carry out this task will vary slightly depending upon which version of Outlook you are using. The version shown below is for Outlook 2010 connecting to a Microsoft Exchange 2010 server running on SBS 2011 server. The steps will be similar for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2013 when connecting to any Exchange version newer than 2003. Please note that Outlook 2002 (Outlook XP) or earlier will not support this type of remote connection.

This process can be done inside the network, for example on a laptop that is to be used offsite, and in the case of Outlook 2010 (and above) with Exchange 2010 (and above) this will have automatically been configured and set up when you connected the laptop to the network and configured Outlook to get your Exchange email. The only thing you may have to do is to install the certificate and format your login details correctly as shown from Step 11 below.

Firstly you will need to obtain the Install Certificate Package which is located on your SBS server within Downloads in the Public folder. You can access this without any particular rights as long as you know the server name and can browse to its location using Windows Explorer. If you know the server's name then you can go to Start and in the search bar type \\ServerName\Public\Downloads where ServerName is the actual name of your server. This will then list a compressed file called "Certicate Download Package.zip" which you can either email to yourself at home or copy it to a USB Pen Drive to take to your home or remote PC. This will of course need to be done from a network attached PC. You can also obtain the file remotely from the Remote Web Workplace utility should you have access to that.

Once you have this file you will just need a couple of additional bit of information and you are ready to go. Firstly the internal domain name of your network and secondly the external server address. To save duplicating the same information I have provided another guide to suggest how you can obtain this information.

  1. Connect your remote/ home PC to the Internet and install the Certificate Download package installer by extracting the files to your desktop and double clicking the InstallCertificate executable file. This will bring up a menu and just choose "Install the certificate on my computer" and click Install, OK'ing the security warning. If successful you will get the message saying you are now able to connect to Remote Web Workplace.
  2. Go to Control panel and change the View to Large Icons
  3. Click on the Mail Icon and Click Email Accountscpanel
  4. Click the New button to create a new accountnewaccount
  5. Choose Manually configure and click Nextmanual
  6. Select Microsoft Exchange and click Nextexchange
  7. Enter the server name eg SERVER and your user name eg John and click the More Settings button. NB - Do NOT click the Check Name button at this stageserver
  8. Select the Connection tab, check the tickbox shown below and click on the Exchange Proxy Settings buttonmore
  9. Fill in the box as shown using your external server address, making sure to use the format msstd:remote.mydomain.com in the second box only. Ensure the authentication is set to Basic and click OK.proxy
  10. You will now be at the Add New Account page again so click the Check Name button. See item 10 below the image for the user name format.check
  11. At this point you will get a popup asking for your user name and password which must be formatted correctly or you will not be able to proceed. On some occasions the username is automatically added as the email address and this is incorrect. Delete anything that is already there and put in the user name using the format Internaldomain\username with your network login password in the relevant field. Make sure to check the remember this box. For those who have scanned to here and don't know what their internal domain name is, your Internaldomain can be found by following this guide
  12. You can now open Outlook, where you may be asked to log in once again (use the same format as before), click the remember password box and your shouldn't be asked next time. Depending on the size of your mailbox and the speed of your broadband connections, you may have to wait a while for a local copy of your mailbox to fully syncronise, but it should be usable for sending mail pretty much straight away.

Hopefully this guide has explained everything thoroughly enough for you to get it working but if there are any problems we will be happy to help.