Has microsoft produced a pop connector for the full blown version of exchange 2003 /2007 yet. A patch .... anything? Or am i stuck with third party? Why is itMicrosoft always drop the ball on something that from a technicians side seems so obvious. signed Annoyed with simplistic stupidity.

I don't believe they have andI hopethey don't!POP is a mail retrieval protocol and not a mail transport protocol.

I'm sorry, i'm at a loss here. This is the problem with the tech world versus the real world. Businesses require both the sendingAND the recieving of email. <-- it helps the whole process out True POP is a mail retrieval system, and it just happens to be one of the most popular ones. By saying you hope they don't add a pop connector your basically saying i hope someone invents a phone that only has outgoing call capabilities. Why would i want to recieve a call... that almost seems silly! more puzzled

Yes,a telephone is a two-way device as you say. In your email example though, you retrieve your mail with POP, but you don't send with POP do you? You send with SMTP which is a mail transport protocol - something that POP wasn't designed to be. Hence why many Exchange people have ageneral dislike of POP connectors. Anyway, in answer to your actual question I'm 99% certain the answer is no and that, outside of SBS, I can't see it changing.

Thank you for the answer. I will look for a third party pop connector. If you have any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. Let me rephrase my concern just for the sake of putting another mind on pondering the problem. Exchange acts as the smtp outgoing server <--technical side Exchange currently has no built in ability to retrieve email from pop <-- technical side SBShas the ability to do both<-- technical side SBS has the ideal setup as it provides a simple way to provide a company with incoming and outgoing email all at one central location, one central troubleshooting area, one area of cost. Why exchange not having a pop connecter is bad for business. In the business world, the owner of a company ask only one question; can i communicate with my employees, clients and suppliers. Businesses purchase exchange only for the end results. can i email, can i share my calender and contacts ..... yes good. If the answer is no, no i can only send email, then this leaves an area for communication break down andthe productbecomes uselessto a business. Secondly people go into business to make money. When you have to tell a client "hey you just purchased this expensive piece of software that does this and does that and does all these wonderfull things buuuuuuuuuut, you need to spend more money to be able to do this one very important thing, business get pissed and instantly beleive only one thing. I am being ripped off. software of this nature needs to be engineered towards making businesses run better and smoother, NOT to satiate the desires of the tech world which is riddled with dogma of what protocols are better and why this or that should be included or excluded. Businesses only wantsolutions to their problems, not more problems that require solutions.

Niel, Aside from the 'technical vs. real world' rant, here's what I think he is referring to: http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid43_gci1252063,00.html It appears that the situation is email in an external POP account needs to be automatically downloaded into an Exchange server mailbox without using the traditional method of configuring Outlook profiles to do it. There are third-party connectors that don't neccesarily run on an Exchange server which will do that. I highly doubt that feature would be added natively in the future as that is a dying topology, not to mention that POP3/IMAP flexibilty has been decreased in Exchange 2007. I personally have never even seen that used in all the Exchange environment I've worked in, so I think it's pretty rare.

Neil, I know it's been a couple months but let me give you my real world example and see what Microsoft has for a answer... My client is a franchising company. They have a corporate office with about 20 employees who use exchange. They also have about 200 franchises that need mailboxes in the same email domain but do not need anything more than pop connectivity since they're geographically dispersed and use email only - no contacts, calendars or shared folders. We'd like to have a cheap option without having to buy licenses for each of the 200 franchises, but continue the email for the corporate users. ie: an appropriately functional pop server, and a pop connector to bring the pop boxes over to exchange for the corporate users. Sorry, i just don't see the pop connector as useless or outdated yet. Jim