iPhone and Outlook Web Access

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There has been something that drives me crazy about using Safari to access Outlook Web Access for Exchange email on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Whenever I reply to a message it is always a surprise where the cursor will land and I found that if I just press in one location and move upwards the magnifying glass will popup and it will slowly scroll to the top of the message where I want to reply. The longer the email the more patience this move takes.

Then I ran across this post that discusses two-finger scrolling in Safari on the iPhone. Although it doesn’t specifically mention Outlook Web Access, it does work for what I needed.

When you reply to a message in OWA on the iPhone/iPod Touch just tap inside the message area and the keyboard will popup. Press Done and the keyboard will then go away. Now scroll in the message area using two fingers to the top of the message, tap, and the keyboard will now let you reply where you expected it to. I never knew you could scroll in a text box like that with two fingers. That should take care of Safari Mobile’s lack of scroll bars in certain text boxes.

So thank you to Brett Peters at http://nobodywantsastyl.us/ for teaching me something new, and valuable, today.

  • http://nobodywantsastyl.us/ Brett Peters

    You’re welcome! I’ve found two-finger scrolling to be a lifesaver, particularly with OWA.

  • http://lonelocust.com Gridman

    So… an iPhone works with OWA webmail at all? I never get past the logon screen before it just stops responding… :-(

  • http://blindsquirrel.org Michael

    Yes! I connect to an Exchange2003 OWA server just about every day with the Touch.

  • http://lonelocust.com Gridman

    I’ve only had the iPhone a few days so I assumed (falsely) that it just didn’t work with OWA at all.

    Since I saw this post I’ve been looking around and see it is hit and miss. Others have the same problem but no one seems to know why. We use Exchange 2003 and OWA also.

  • http://www.blindsquirrel.org blindsquirrel

    Let’s say your OWA site is http://OWA.yoursite.com. What happens when you go to http://OWA.yoursite.com/Exchange or https://OWA.yoursite.com/Exchange (not sure if you have a cert, etc.)

  • http://lonelocust.com Gridman

    We just have http://ourdomain/exchange setup. No cert, no redirect from something like owa.ourdomain.

    It pulls up the username and password dialog, then it goes into terminal coma. Nothing happens. No error on the browser nothing obvious in the event log on the server.

    Apple support forums are full of people saying, “it does work. It doesn’t work.” but no one has identified what the mystery ingredient is.

    I was really surprised by your post because I had mistakenly thought it just didn’t work for anyone.

  • cbrigante2

    I’ve found I can get it to work on OWA from an Exchange 2003 server, but not with Exchange 2007.

  • http://nobodywantsastyl.us/ Brett Peters

    Odd. After a recent upgrade, I have no problem accessing OWA on Exchange 2007 over SSL. There must be something else going on here.

  • http://lonelocust.com Gridman

    I’ve had a chance to do a bit more diagnostic. I installed an SSL certificate on our Exchange 2003 server and when it prompts for the login it now shows that it is a secure login, but it still doesn’t work.

    I contacted a colleague who runs a different Exchange 2003 server and we tried my iPhone against his OWA login – we got the same results – no login possible.

    I got the iPhone SDK along with the Aspen simulator and tried that against my server – and it works! I can only hope that some bug that will be addressed soon is at play here.

  • ralph

    I hate Microsoft… been trying for days to get Exchange to work … clearly they don’t want anything to work on the iPhone.

    It’s a joke … they think they can control the market … but really their pissing off their own users … and pushing us more to apple.

    I’ve moved to Gmail for the same reason … Hotmail just isn’t supported by iPhone.

    And they want me to “upgrade” to vista?! lol

  • Owaforums

    I have recently released an app for OWA into the app store called Outlook Web Email (theres a free version to give it a try as well!). It allows for a cleaner and easier to use interface than safari OWA in my opinion, but any feedback is appreciated!

  • bforb

    It looks like someone finally came out with an app that avoids Safari. If activesync isn’t enabled on the server, it still lets users download e-mails into a nice app. Check it out:nnhttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outlook-web-email-free/id428990681?mt=8nnthat is the free version and here is the paid:nnhttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outlook-web-email/id428974099?mt=8