Evolution appears unable to create EWS or Exchange MAPI account

[z]

Evolution appears unable to create an EW or MAPI account. All the steps proceed normally, including fetching the URL (for EWS) or authenticating (for MAPI). However, at the conclusion of account creation process, no actual account appears in the list.

I've tried starting Evolution from the command line using various DEBUG_ variables and there are no EWS- or MAPI-specific errors. So I'm not exactly sure what to do next.

I am fairly certain the problem doesn't lie with my corporate Exchange server, as web mail works fine and any other EWS-capable client (like the mail app in Android).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: evolution 3.6.0-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-16.25-generic 3.5.4
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Oct 3 12:40:28 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Beta amd64 (20120925)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Update... when I logged out and logged back in, then restarted Evolution, the left-side pane filled with my multiple attempts at creating EWS and MAPI accounts. So the account gets created, but doesn't appear in the list for some reason.

 I had to kill all Evolution processes to regain control of my desktop. I deleted all Evolution-related configuration and database files in my home directory and rebooted. Then I first configured a Gmail account, which the wizard took care of automatically. Then I configured an IMAP account (connected to my home Ubuntu server built with mail-stack-delivery and amavisd-new-postfix). This also worked. Finally, I configured an EWS account and, this time, it showed up in the list and is working fine.

So it appears that the initial install of Evolution (and possibly evolution-ews) leaves the system in some kind of incorrect state.

[Colinjones71 (colinjones71)]

Had exactly the same experience on pre release 12.10, with 3.6 Evolution. Saw this bug report, so tried logging out and back in again, to see the same thing - all the account add attempts I had done then suddenly appeared and all started challenging me for log in details.

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Colin, thanks for adding your comment... would you please indicate that the bug affects you? Perhaps then it might receive more visibility.

[Marc Baas (baas-marc)]

I can confirm this bug. In my case relogging/rebooting doesn't do a thing though.

I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 x64.

Pop email works fine, but with my Gmail account that is configured for IMAPX, it doesn't show up.

When I go to the configuration files in my /home dir, it looks as if all data is present for my account. For some reason it just doesn't show up in Evolution.

Deleting all possible Evolution related folders in my /home dir did not make any difference in my case though. Running in a terminal did not show any config or setup related problems.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Marc, try cleaning everything up and then creating your Gmail once more. This time, deselect the options to include calendar and contacts. Does it work now? I've seen scattered reports that Gmail will work this way, and that's what I did when I configured mine. I can't say whether adding contacts and calendars after the initial config will work, since I don't use those Google services.

[Mark Andrew Wheadon (mark-wheadon)]

I had the same problem as Marc Baas, and solved it using the information provided above by Steve Riley. I then added the calendar and contacts back manually.

Thanks very much.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Please update to the latest evolution-data-server packages, which should have made it to the archive yesterday, it should fix the issue. (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-data-server/3.6.0-0ubuntu3)

If it's not the case, don't hesitate to set this bug back to New.

[spetrucci (salvatore-petrucci)]

Hi all,
I have the same problem descripted by Steve Riley in the first post. I have the evolution-data-server 3.6.0-0ubuntu3 installed and I use unity interface.

Best regards,

[Anders Aagaard (aagaande)]

Cant change bug status, but I ran into this now on an updated system

Package: evolution-data-server
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 3.6.0-0ubuntu3

Package: evolution-mapi
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 3.6.0-0ubuntu1

[Silviu Julean (sjulean)]

I can confirm that this is not fixed. Please reopen.

[Stefan Heim (stefanheim01)]

Confirmed not fixed in evolution-data-server 3.6.2-0ubuntu0.1. Somebody with sufficient permissions please reopen the bug.

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Several reports of the fix not working.

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I changed the status back to "confirmed" because of the ongoing reports. I don't have Evolution currently installed on any of my machines at this point, however, so I can't check myself.

[Brett Lehrer (brett-lehrer)]

Fedora 18 x86_64
evolution-mapi
Version : 3.6.3
Release : 1.fc18

I also just encountered this same issue. After installing evolution-mapi and attempting to add an Exchange 2007 account, everything appeared to authenticate and save successfully, except the account never actually appeared in the list. After trying several times, I killed every evolution process including:

/usr/libexec/evolution/3.6/evolution-alarm-notify
/usr/libexec/evolution-source-registry
/usr/libexec/evolution-calendar-factory
/usr/libexec/evolution-addressbook-factory

which did not terminate after closing Evolution. I then immediately reopened Evolution and all 4 of my MAPI accounts appeared at once. It now appears to be working just fine.

[Brett Lehrer (brett-lehrer)]

My mistake, contacts and my calendar still did not work until rebooting, but now those are all syncing as well.

[Andrew M-H (andrewmh20)]

I confirm the same bug with evolution-ews even with the updated data-server

[Xell (alekseyh)]

Brett Lehrer, thank you. I had the same in OpenSuSe 12.3 x86_64 and evolution-ews 3.6.4-1.7.1

[Ross Hopkins (teamcooperuk)]

I am also experiencing this problem, except that when I exit Evolution, when I re-open it I am forced through the restore/add new account process again. No accounts ever get added.

[Scott McKellar (smckellar)]

I can confirm using Xubuntu and Evolution 3.6.4 and Evolution-ews after going through the Mail Account wizard was not seeing any accounts. After several attempts I then rebooted and all 6-7 accounts from each attempt appeared.

All working after the reboot, so good to be able to use my work E-mail on Xubuntu :)

[[e-mail] (laeb)]

I can confirrm it still exist in a clean install of ubuntu 13.10 64 bit

[Giovanni Lovato (heruan)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 13.10 64bit.

[Ross Hopkins (teamcooperuk)]

Hello,

I'm not sure where you got my email address from, but I have no idea what this is about!

On Thursday, 24 October 2013, 10:02, "<email address hidden>" <email address hidden> wrote:

I can confirrm it still exist in a clean install of ubuntu 13.10 64 bit

--
You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
report.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1061195

Title:
  Can't create EWS or MAPI account

Status in “evolution-data-server” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Evolution appears unable to create an EW or MAPI account. All the
  steps proceed normally, including fetching the URL (for EWS) or
  authenticating (for MAPI). However, at the conclusion of account
  creation process, no actual account appears in the list.

  I've tried starting Evolution from the command line using various
  DEBUG_ variables and there are no EWS- or MAPI-specific errors. So I'm
  not exactly sure what to do next.

  I am fairly certain the problem doesn't lie with my corporate Exchange
  server, as web mail works fine and any other EWS-capable client (like
  the mail app in Android).

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
  Package: evolution 3.6.0-0ubuntu3
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-16.25-generic 3.5.4
  Uname: Linux 3.5.0-16-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu1
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Wed Oct  3 12:40:28 2012
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Beta amd64 (20120925)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: evolution
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-data-server/+bug/1061195/+subscriptions

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Ross, you received the email because you appear in the list of subscribers. Most likely, that happened when you filed comment #20 to this bug on 2013-07-10.

[z (steveriley-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Bumping status up to new. In light of the continued reports, is someone able to take a look at this issue?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[John Vrbanac (john.vrbanac)]

This is still an issue in the version packaged with 13.10 (Evolution 3.8.4).

Confirmed workaround:
Restart machine
-- or --
Kill evolution and all of its background processes and then start again

[Jarett DeAngelis (starkruzr1701)]

Appears to still be a problem in 14.04, further, after rebooting or killing those processes and starting over, while the account shows up it just asks for your password over and over.

[Patryk "LeadMan" Benderz (leadman)]

I confirm. I have also noticed that EWS account's entry is disappearing from gnome keyring. This may be linked with repeated password prompts.

[Mahdi Fattahi (mfat)]

I can confirm the bug persists in Ubuntu 14.04.

[dinanj (dinanj)]

can confirm in

evolution 3.12.2-1
kernel 3.13.11.1-1

after creation of account does not populate in any menu any data.
close or reboot, upon re-opening of evolution there is the new account wizard, to which this process repeats.

however, in the configuration files evolution > mail > state.ini there are lines that point to this account actually being there

[Store 1401282120.12535.6@myemail]
Expanded=true

[Folder folder://1401282120.12535.6%40myemail/INBOX]
GroupByThreads=false
PreviewVisible=true
Expanded=false

among other files in the sources directory there are loads of .source files
they are of course my every attempt.
each new creation of an account overwrite's the state.ini to match it's source information

at least this is about all I have figured out, im not a programmer so I may be barking up the wrong tree.

[Genadi Saltikov (carmageddon-2)]

Confirmed in Mint 17 attempting to set up Exchange access using EWS Server Type.

Seems this is a bug since 2012 - why is it so slow to be fixed?
Are there alternative ways to access Exchange 2010 server?

[Marc A (alpine82)]

Same exact problem here and have tried all fixes/remedies. Ubuntu 14.04.

[[e-mail] (mike-papersolve)]

I was experiencing this exact same bug as well. Based on information I read in the corresponding RedHat report (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=879773) I was able to get this to work by removing all the Evolution configuration directories (which did have some prior attempts at configuration from a long time ago) and killing and restarting Evolution:

[Fri Aug 8 10:02:25 EDT 2014] > mike at ossy in ~
↪ rm -rf .config/evolution/ .cache/evolution/ .local/share/evolution/
[Fri Aug 8 10:02:40 EDT 2014] > mike at ossy in ~
↪ pkill evolution

I went through the account wizard again, and after adding the password prompt showed up and I was able to type the password and add the account.

[Sayantan Das (sayantan13)]

Figured out a way to do it.
Make sure to remove all attempts made before as explained in#35.
Add the exchange account using EWS. Then click Finish.
Do NOT, make any additional settings changes. It should work . Tested with two different MS Exchange accounts.

[Kai Schröder (ks-cs)]

I have the same problem. The workarounds from the last two bug reports worked for me.

[Daniel Jay Haskin (djhaskin987)]

I wanted to post one further workaround. This is thanks to a co worker of mine.

He tells me that when using the gnome shell and evolution, he *did not* use the online accounts at first. Instead, he first manually configured his IMAP email account (his personal email account) as he always did within evolution. He then went into online accounts and configured his ews account through gnome shell and everything worked :)

[James Pizzurro (madkowa)]

#35 also worked for me in Ubuntu 14.04. Thank you very much, Mike.

[Sergio (sergiorussia)]

#35 worked for me too, thanks

[suoko (suoko)]

15.04 and I confirm this bug is still open

[Vihaj Banday (vihaj-banday)]

Workaround works on Ubuntu 14.04

[Thomas A. F. Thorne (tafthorne)]

I can confirm that I hit this bug while running 3.10.4 installed from the Ubuntu Software Center for the current LTS version of Ubuntu
$ lsb_release -rc
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

I had previous setup Gmail (googlemail) and a pop account in Evolution. Some recent changes to my work's exchange setup meant that pop was no longer a connection option. I disabled the pop account. Installed evolution-ews from the Software Centre and tried to add my Exchange account. Everything worked very well until I clicked the final button, which caused the window to close and seemingly no new email account to be added. This looks very much like a silent failure.

Closing Evolution and reopening it using the File > Quite or red X did not seem to change the state of things. After finding this bug via an Internet search I tried the work around of logging out from my current GUI session and logging back in. When I opened Evolution two new Exchange MAPI accounts were shown. Both seemed to work.

If people have tried to setup Exchange with Microsoft Exchange instead of using Outlook on Windows and seen this they may think it has silently failed. They may be wholly unaware that there is in fact a working mail account if they were to open Evolution agian, but why would they try when they have seen it fail?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Gergely Polonkai (gergelypolonkai)]

Still experiencing this issue with evolution-data-server 3.10.4-0ubuntu1.5 (Ubuntu 14.04).

[Joshua (joshua-vijay)]

I'm experiencing this issue with evolution 3.16.5 packages.

[Antti Haapala (ztane)]

Wily here, installed newest evolution, evolution-ews 10 minutes ago, and failed in account creation as above.

[KH (kheller)]

This bug happened to me. I found the workaround due to this page: http://askubuntu.com/questions/459504/evolution-appears-unable-to-store-mail-account-details (which pointed me to this current launchpad page)

that askubuntu workaround (in the answer from Filbuntu) got things up-and-working for me.

evolution Version: 3.10.4-0ubuntu2
evolution-data-server Version: 3.10.4-0ubuntu1.5
evolution-ews Version: 3.10.2-0ubuntu2

on ubuntu LTS 14.04

[arhaglor (v-shevlyakov)]

[Fri Aug 8 10:02:25 EDT 2014] > mike at ossy in ~
↪ rm -rf .config/evolution/ .cache/evolution/ .local/share/evolution/
[Fri Aug 8 10:02:40 EDT 2014] > mike at ossy in ~
↪ pkill evolution

and then add google mail and after that exchange account could be added. annoying bug ....

[Scott Moore (scottbomb)]

Confirmed in 2012 and STILL "undecided" about its severity? I would think that not being able to set up the most commonly-used email protocol in business would get a higher priority. Nevertheless, it worked for me just fine in 14.04. I did a fresh install of 16.04 and have the exact same result as the OP did.... FOUR YEARS AGO.

[Scott Moore (scottbomb)]

And after a reboot, the missing account I created is suddenly there. Weird bug. At least it works.

[Dan Lenski (lenski)]

I had pretty much the exact same experience as @scottbomb: EWS account creation worked find for me on 14.04-15.10, but then I tried adding an EWS account on 16.04, and it repeatedly failed to appear.

After killing *all* evolution-related processes and restarting, it worked.

Evolution 3.18.5.2

[Jayendra Sharan (jayendra-sharan)]

I restarted my machine and it worked.

[Andreas Noteng (andreas-noteng)]

This bug is fixed in upstream release 3.20, which is available in Debian. The package cannot simply be synced over, as it also needs evolution-data-server which afaik has some build issues.

[Andreas Noteng (andreas-noteng)]

evolution-mapi has been deprecated, evolution-ews is now recommended for Exchange support

[Anton Kozlovsky (kozlovsky-a-a)]

I faced once with the same problem after installing evolution-ews.
But after I've tried to add account 3-4 times and it worked.
I removed unnecessary accounts and left the only one.
But there is another problem. Evolution hangs and freezes

[Connor Doherty (cnnr-dhrty)]

Same problem, 2016. Restarting works.

[Giulio Malventi (giulio-people)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 16.04, Evolution 3.20.5

[Giovanni Panozzo (giox069)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 17.10, Evolution 3.22.6, using EWS.
The usual workaround (delete cfg, cache and pkill) works fine.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/459504/evolution-appears-unable-to-store-mail-account-details

[Stephan Prätsch (stephan.praetsch)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, Evolution 3.28.5-0ubuntu0.18.04.1, using EWS.

The usual workaround (delete cfg, cache and pkill) works fine.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/459504/evolution-appears-unable-to-store-mail-account-details

[raneq (raneq)]

Hi, ending 2020 and still an issue :/

Using Debian 10, Evolution version 3.30.5-1.1. Trying to connect to Microsoft Exchange 2007.

I just started Evolution for the 2d time, 1st after trying set up an EWS account, and all attempts I had done appeared in the account list at left. Now it just works, thanks!

However, it confused me a lot. Specially no error messages, no logs at the shell, no nothing. People that isn't "techie and english-speaking", both at the same time, won't find this bugpage nor the askubuntu site, I'm afraid.

If the issue can't be solved after 8 years, there must be a reason. Therefore, why not add a warning at the end of the wizard with "Please now restart Evolution" ??

Thank for making possible to stay in linux even when working for microsoft corporate environments.