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Email Clients

Most email clients released these days have an interface that can be used to query information from an LDAP Directory service to feed the addressbook. This page contains links to instructions for setting up various email clients to talk to Stanford's Directory service for publicly available information.

Generic Instructions

The basic configuration settings required by any application to access an LDAP directory are the hostname of the directory and the base Distinguished Name (dn). It is also useful to filter the list of possible users to those that have email addresses, but this is not required. For the Stanford LDAP directory the appropriate settings are:

  • hostname: directory.stanford.edu
  • dn: cn=people,dc=stanford,dc=edu
  • filter: (&(objectclass=person)(mail=*))

Thunderbird

  1. From the Thunderbird pull down menus select Edit->Preferences, then the Composition tab, and finally the Addressing subtab.
  2. Click on the Edit Directories button, then click on the Add button
  3. Fill out the General tab as follows:
  4. Fill out the Advanced tab as follows:
  5. Click OK to add the directory, then click OK to close the LDAP Directory Servers window.
  6. Set Directory Server to the directory that was just created, in this example Stanford. Make sure that the checkbox to the left of Directory Server is checked.
    1. Close the Preferences.
    2. At this point entering a name fragment in an address box will cause Thunderbird to query the directory and return a list of choices. The query is an anonymous search and will return only email address of users that have marked their information as public.

Microsoft Outlook

  1. Select Tools->Account Settings from the Outlook pull down menus.
  2. Select the Address Books tab and click on New
  3. Select Internet Directory Service (LDAP) and click the Next button.
  4. Enter a Server Name of directory.stanford.edu
  5. Click on More Settings and then select the Search tab.
  6. Enter a Custom Search Base of cn=people,dc=stanford,dc=edu and click OK.
  7. Click Next and then click Finish.
  8. Restart Outlook
  9. Select Tools->Address Book from the Outlook pull down menus.
  10. Select Tools->Options from the Address Book Contacts pull down menus.
  11. Click on the Add button in the Addressing window.
  12. High light the directory.stanford.edu entry and click on the Add button.
  13. Select directory.stanford.edu in the "Show this address list first:" selection box.
  14. In the "When sending mail, ..." selection box move directory.stanford.edu up by high lighting it and clicking on the up-arrow to the right of the selection box.
  15. Click OK to exit the Addressing window, and close the Address Book: Contacts window
Last modified January 25, 2011