Exchange 2007 & POP3 Access

Exchange 2007 features a built in POP3 server but by default it is off and will not accept plain text connections. Good luck telling that to a difficult customer who wants to send his password in clear text over the Internet just because the Apple store told him so.

By default, going to port 110 and trying pain text user/pass dialog will yield the following error:

“-ERR Command is not valid in this state”

To enable plain text login drop down to PowerShell and issue the following command:

Set-PopSettings -LoginType PlainTextLogin

Then make sure to restart Microsoft Exchange POP3 service:

Restart-Service -service msExchangePOP3

As far as how to enable POP3 service on Exchange 2007, here is some more PowerShell magic:

Set-service msExchangePOP3 -startuptype automatic

Start-service -service msExchangePOP3