Mail for Exchange 2.5 - This One is Big

There is a new version of Mail for Exchange available - Mail for Exchange 2.5.

Mail for Exchange is the name of Nokia's email client built on Microsoft's ActiveSync technonology. Mail for Exchange provides push synchronization of email and other data between Microsoft Exchange and Nokia devices.



The new version of Mail for Exchange is not an incremental update but instead, a big step forward for this free email application.

For the first time Mail for Exchange now includes support for features available on Microsoft Exchange 2007.

So if you are in luck, and your company uses Exchange 2007 you have a few additional useful features.

Ability to set up Out of the Office auto-reply notifications from your Nokia device. In my opinion, this is probably the best feature of this release. A few of us have probably forgot to turn on the "out of office" function when we have rushed out on Friday afternoon when going on vacation. Or perhaps realized on the way to the airport, before a long trip, that we forgot to turn on the out-of-office auto replay. Well, no more booting up the laptop to set up out-of-office you can do it directly from your device.



However, finding this new function is a bit tricky. I expected the out-of-office function to show up in the calendar but it is not.



Instead, it is part of your Mail for Exchange profile. You need to go to the MfE application in the MfE folder, and then go to "edit profile" and buried deep in the settings for "profile" is out of office.



But once you find the feature it is dead easy to set up.



My second favourite feature of MfE 2.5 is support for "Follow-Up" flags so that you can see flags on the device for emails that have been flagged on the server. It is also possible to Clear flag, Flag complete and set Follow up from the device.

Mail for Exchange 2.5 also introduces a number of Mailbox policies which will make all the IT administrators of Exchange happy.

For an example, the administrator can allow or disallow simple passwords such as “12345” or “1111”. Similarly, the administrator can define the length of time a password can be used before it must be changed and also define the number of old passwords to be saved so that user can not reuse them.

These features might not seem so important for an end user but makes all the difference to the group of hard working administrators who has the thankless task of supporting us all with our email issues.

The number of supported device models has also grown. Mail for Exchange 2.5 naturally supports all Eseries devices and a number of Nseries device. MfE 2.5 supports these new devices

Nokia N78, Nokia N96, Nokia 6124 and Nokia 6220.

The release also contains a number of bug fixes - that goes without saying. But there is one more change. Mail for Exchange now comes in multiple installation files, depending on the version of Symbian on your Nokia device.

S60 3.0 - First generation Eseries i.e. E50, E60, E61(i) E62, E65, E70, N73 etc.

S60 3.1 - Some Eseries and many Nseries i.e. E51, E90, N81 8GB, N82, N95, N95 8GB

S60 3.2 - Nseries devices i.e. N78, N96, 6124, 6220 classic

Once again, please note that the above features require Microsoft Exchange 2007 server. If you / your company is using a previous version of Microsoft Exchange as your email server, the above features will not be available.

Mail for Exchange can be downloaded from here.