anything out there better than entourage?

P

Pete

two major major problems without fixes have me asking if there is
anything out there better than entourage.

the problems:

1 - can't display names in my address book by firstname, lastname OR
lastname, firstname. they always come both ways, so everyone is in
there twice. i don;t need that or want that.
2 - the search address book is SO SLOW that i can't even use it. have
to wait til i get to the PC at my office and use the "lookout" function
on my Outlook program.

is there anything better out there? apple address book/iCal/apple mail?
anything integrated out there? palm desktop???

HELP!!!!

thanks - Pete
 
R

Raymon

Barry, I copied and pasted the script into Script Editor and got the
following error.

I checked every contact in my Address Book and field has been renamed
Last Name, First Name.

Any ideas?

Microsoft Entourage got an error: Can't get every contact whose custom
field eight of it = "".
 
R

Raymon

Raymon said:
Barry, I copied and pasted the script into Script Editor and got the
following error.

I checked every contact in my Address Book and field has been renamed
Last Name, First Name.

Any ideas?

Microsoft Entourage got an error: Can't get every contact whose custom
field eight of it = "".
Click to expand...

Forgot to say I'm using Office 2004, OS 10.4.2

Thanks.
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

Forgot to say I'm using Office 2004, OS 10.4.2

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Strange, it's working here.

Have you applied the updates to entourage to bring you up to v11.2.1?
 
R

Raymon

Yes I'm updated to v11.2.1.

This is what I get from Script Editor after compiling. SE shows no
error in the 'result' box but hangs at 'every contact whose custom
field eight is "". Does the same if I save and try to run from
Entourages script menu. Odd.

-- Store Last Name-First Name v1.0
-- Barry Wainwright 01/11/2005

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set custom field eight name of address book 1 to "Last Name, First
Name"
set theContacts to every contact whose custom field eight is ""
repeat with theContact in theContacts
set {firstName, lastName} to {first name, last name} of theContact

if lastName is "" then
set newName to firstName
else if firstName is "" then
set newName to lastName
else
set newName to lastName & ", " & firstName
end if
set custom field eight of theContact to newName
end repeat
end tell
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

Yes I'm updated to v11.2.1.

This is what I get from Script Editor after compiling. SE shows no
error in the 'result' box but hangs at 'every contact whose custom
field eight is "". Does the same if I save and try to run from
Entourages script menu. Odd.

-- Store Last Name-First Name v1.0
-- Barry Wainwright 01/11/2005

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set custom field eight name of address book 1 to "Last Name, First
Name"
set theContacts to every contact whose custom field eight is ""
repeat with theContact in theContacts
set {firstName, lastName} to {first name, last name} of theContact

if lastName is "" then
set newName to firstName
else if firstName is "" then
set newName to lastName
else
set newName to lastName & ", " & firstName
end if
set custom field eight of theContact to newName
end repeat
end tell
Click to expand...

Very strange. What happens if you try to run the one-liner:

Tell app "Microsoft Entourage" to get every contact whose custom field eight
is ""
(That should all be a single line)
 
R

Raymon

Hope I understand you correctly, I'm no script writer. I ran (Tell app
"Microsoft Entourage" to get every contact whose custom field eight
is "") as a single line and I got the same error box.

Thanks for your help.
 
P

Pete

Barry - the script did it! awesome and easy. thank you! now how does
one convince the gnomes at MS to fix the underlying entourage software
so that names can be sorted by first name or last name? on a more
serious level, what is the best way to eliminate the many duplicate
entries i have in entourage address book from hot-syncing with my palm
treo? the big problem is that some entries have the same first name and
last name, but different data, while others are identical except for a
space here or there. using "undupe"' for palm (about $10) i cleared 500
exact duplicates, but still have several thousand dupes that appear
identical but must have some small formatting difference.

i'd love to find a program thatw ould allow me to combine all the data
from similar entries (eg: if the first name and last anme are the same,
and the data in any field is identical, then only one set is saved. if
the data is different then all the data is saved. thatw ould allow me
to merge contacts witht he same name and say two different phone
numbers or an email in one entry and a phone number in another entry.

thnaks again!
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Hope I understand you correctly, I'm no script writer. I ran (Tell app
"Microsoft Entourage" to get every contact whose custom field eight
is "") as a single line and I got the same error box.

Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

Are you updated to SP 2 (Entourage 11.2?) Do you have an Exchange account?
Which email address is your default mail account - Exchange or another? And
which address book has your contacts - the Exchange address book or the one
"On My Computer"?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
R

Raymon

Paul said:
Are you updated to SP 2 (Entourage 11.2?) Do you have an Exchange account?
Which email address is your default mail account - Exchange or another? And
which address book has your contacts - the Exchange address book or the one
"On My Computer"?
Click to expand...

Paul, I'm at v11.2.1. No Exchange account. Address book is "On My
computer".
 
D

dcaz

That your address book search is "SO SLOW" is puzzling. How many entries do
you have? I have 600, and my searches, while not instantaneous, are not at
all unacceptable
Click to expand...

I have over 2000 contacts in Entourage. And my search is very slow. Not
*unusable* on my 800Mhz/1gb machine... but not really acceptable, and
much slower than the Address Book searches
 
S

stuartm

This may have been covered in an earlier thread but one reason for
Entourage being slow may be due to spotlight on OsX 10.4 which tries to
index everything. Make sure that you have specified that Spotlight
ignores your Main Identity folder.
Personally I find the latest version of Entourage boots up and works
much faster than earlier versions
 
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