So you’ve got the new DROID X from Verizon. Love the phone, love the features, but can’t set up your corporate exchange email account? Well, read on.
You’ve entered all the required information (server, domain, user, etc), however the phone tells you that it cannot connect to server. This could be the issue with the way the phone handles (or rather mishandles) SSL which was documented by user jglazer on this Motorola support forum. I ran into this issue when one of my co-workers asked me to help him set up his new phone. We’ve tried different combinations including domain\user, \user and just user for domain entry, as well as different aliases for the server with no luck. Our company is running exchange 2003 SP2 with OWA publicly accessible and verified to be working. There is no SSL. After some time trying to tackle the problem I came across the thread where I found jglazer‘s solution and decided to give it a try. He claimed that in order to get the phone to work, the exchange server has to have SSL enabled while the email is set up on the phone, and disabled for general use. I can confirm that this method works (at least for my set up – without SSL). Here are the steps:
Before I go any further, I want to make it absolutely clear that this guide is in no way all inclusive, and you should attempt to make changes or modify any settings on the server only if you are familiar with Exchange and understand what you are doing. Be aware that any changes you make may unintentionally harm the server, bring it down, or cause loss of data. Use at your own risk.
1. You need to have a certificate installed on the server in order to enable SSL. You don’t have to purchase one, just create one using the same or different server. There is a very good guide on how to enable SSL on 2003 OWA here
2. Once the SSL has been enabled make sure it works by connecting to your OWA through https:// (example: https://yourcompany.com/exchange). If this does not get you to your inbox, then either the certificate or the SSL is not set up correctly. Don’t forget to open the required port (https:443) in your firewall.
3. If SSL works fine, then configure your DROID X the way you already tried and make sure you leave Secure Connection checked in. It will likely ask you to bypass certificate verification if you’ve created the certificate in the way outlined in the guide above, so go ahead and press ‘yes’
4. The setup should now finish without any errors, however you may or may not be able to send or receive mail. If mail works fine, then you can skip this step. Now you have to disable the SSL on the server, and also go into the corporate email settings and disable secure connection in the existing account that you’ve created in step 3.
5. Given that you’ve completed all the steps successfully, you should now have fully functional exchange account on your DROID!
If the above doesn’t help you, then another sure way would be to use a third party app for your corporate email (Touchdown for one).
Hope this helps, and good luck!