Exchange CAL’s and Multiple Mailboxes

Today a customer asked me, “If I access two mailboxes from within Outlook, does that utilize two Exchange CAL’s?”.

My first reaction was no, it uses only one CAL. But after I thought about it for a second I decided to verify my answer.

According to Microsoft’s How to Buy Exchange 2007 web site;

“The Exchange Server 2007 user/device CAL is required for each user/device gaining access to the server, and entitles access rights to both editions of Exchange Server.”

Ok, that seems to verify my answer, and after checking three other sources I felt confident the correct answer was that it required only one CAL.

I did fnd some conflicting information in my searches.  Here’s a link to an Windows IT Pro article from 2007 that clearly states a CAL is required for each mailbox. (first sentence of the fourth paragraph)  This obviously isn’t correct.

Outlook Web Access – Unable to reply or forward a message

I worked on two laptops this week, both running Vista and IE7.   Both were trying to access Outlook Web Access running on an SBS 2003 server.

Everything appeared ok until you attempted  to reply or forward a message.  The page would open but the area where you would type in the text of your message had a small box with a red “X” in it.

After experimenting with the browser security settings and getting nowhere, a co-worker started doing some google searches and came across a solution that ultimately corrected the issue.

In OWA, click on Options in the lower left corner of the of the screen.

Under the E-mail Security section, click Download.  (this downloads the latest S/MIME control.)

Click Run to install the control.

Close IE to have the changes take effect.