Entourage & new Mobile Me (formerly .Mac) & Sync Services

[Michelle]

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not currently a subscriber of .Mac, but
I'm planning to get a new MacBook this summer and was planning on adding
that to my purchase.

I use Entourage for all mail/calendar/contacts/notes/to-do, but I've had
trouble lately with Sync Services. It's created duplicates in Entourage--as
if it's pulling old events/to-do's from iCal and Entourage doesn't recognize
them as one that it already has. I've had as many as 3 duplicates (without
the Entourage category) in addition to the correct one. If any of these
things had a reminder with them, it's as if it starts the entire process all
over again. All reminders start from the beginning. If it was a monthly
reminder, it pops up and pops again for the next month after "completing"
the current month. Multiply this times 3 if there were 3 duplicates.

I'll be backing up tonight and then will be deleting all Address Book/iCal
files in order to reset Sync Services. Hopefully, this will fix my current
issues.

However, if I sign up for .Mac/Mobile Me and make changes on a different
computer (or the Mobile Me site), will it then route the corrections to the
Apple apps first and then to Entourage through Sync Services.

I guess I'm looking to see how people use .Mac when their primary program is
Entourage instead of the Apple Apps. Does it work as you would expect it
to?

 

[Diane Ross]

However, if I sign up for .Mac/Mobile Me and make changes on a different
computer (or the Mobile Me site), will it then route the corrections to the
Apple apps first and then to Entourage through Sync Services.

Sync actually works through the Truth.

Everything you wanted to know about syncing. The Truth, The Whole Truth, and
Nothing But The Truth.

³Why does syncing play Gossip with my contacts?³

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/07/why_does_the_syncing_play_goss.html>

<http://tinyurl.com/34qkrv>

Basics of how Sync Services Works

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/syncservices/basics.html>

 

[William Smith]

However, if I sign up for .Mac/Mobile Me and make changes on a different
computer (or the Mobile Me site), will it then route the corrections to the
Apple apps first and then to Entourage through Sync Services.

I guess I'm looking to see how people use .Mac when their primary program is
Entourage instead of the Apple Apps. Does it work as you would expect it
to?

Hi Michelle!

This is a brand new product from Apple and no one here has any more
information about it than you can find on Apple's website
<http://www.apple.com/mobileme/>. We simply don't know how it works yet.

However, because it supports Outlook for Windows, I am encouraged by
what Entourage might be able to do. Apple's Sync Services doesn't exist
on Windows.

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Kerry]

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not currently a subscriber of .Mac, but
I'm planning to get a new MacBook this summer and was planning on adding
that to my purchase.

I use Entourage for all mail/calendar/contacts/notes/to-do, but I've had
trouble lately with Sync Services.  It's created duplicates in Entourage--as
if it's pulling old events/to-do's from iCal and Entourage doesn't recognize
them as one that it already has.  I've had as many as 3 duplicates (without
the Entourage category) in addition to the correct one.  If any of these
things had a reminder with them, it's as if it starts the entire process all
over again.  All reminders start from the beginning.  If it was a monthly
reminder, it pops up and pops again for the next month after "completing"
the current month.  Multiply this times 3 if there were 3 duplicates.

I'll be backing up tonight and then will be deleting all Address Book/iCal
files in order to reset Sync Services.  Hopefully, this will fix my current
issues.

However, if I sign up for .Mac/Mobile Me and make changes on a different
computer (or the Mobile Me site), will it then route the corrections to the
Apple apps first and then to Entourage through Sync Services.

I guess I'm looking to see how people use .Mac when their primary program is
Entourage instead of the Apple Apps.  Does it work as you would expect it
to?

--
Michelle

Using Office 2004 (latest updates) on a 1.33 Ghz G4 Powerbook running OS
10.4.11

Sync services has an issue which Microsoft is working on. There is a
workaround. Only sync one module - you most important one.In my case
its Calendar. To do this, turn off sync services, delete the iCal
Entourage calendar and then renable sync services in Entourage only
turning your most important module. It will now work 100%.

 

[Michelle]

I actually followed the directions to reset sync services (
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/syncservices.html#ss2 ) and both
Address Book and iCal seem to have brought in everything that it should from
Entourage.

My question now is concerning .Mac/Mobile Me, Mail, and Entourage.

Now that I have my calendar and address book syncing correctly, how do
people get their e-mail's synced?

I still plan on using Entourage as my primary client when I'm on my home
computer. How do Mail, Entourage, and .Mac interact? Do people have their
e-mail addresses forwarded to a .Mac address? Or does .Mac somehow interact
directly with Entourage even if I'm not using Apple Mail. Or do you somehow
cause Entourage to sync with Apple Mail as it does with the iCal and Address
Book apps.

Sorry for so many questions, but I'd like to have an idea of how this works
so that once I buy my new MacBook in a month or so and subscribe to
MobileMe/.Mac, I can be up and running fairly quickly.

 

[Michel Bintener]

I still plan on using Entourage as my primary client when I'm on my home
computer. How do Mail, Entourage, and .Mac interact? Do people have their
e-mail addresses forwarded to a .Mac address? Or does .Mac somehow interact
directly with Entourage even if I'm not using Apple Mail. Or do you somehow
cause Entourage to sync with Apple Mail as it does with the iCal and Address
Book apps.

Hi Michelle,

the solution is nowhere near as complicated, at least from an end user's
perspective. What you need to do is set up your .Mac/MobileMe account as an
IMAP account, as opposed to a POP account. IMAP accounts keep their messages
stored on the server, as opposed to POP accounts, which download messages
and store them locally. Since your messages are on the server, you can
access them through a number of interfaces, such as the .Mac/MobileMe web
interface or IMAP-capable mail clients, among which we find Entourage and
Apple Mail. In other words, any of these interfaces can be used to view the
online content stored on the Apple servers, and you won't see any major
differences content-wise, as they all access the same data over the
internet.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[Michelle]

So, if I have a Yahoo Mail account as my primary e-mail address, what do I
need to do between it and the .Mac/MobileMe account? And then will my
Entourage data just change dynamically as things change on the server? I'll
still see everything as normal in Entourage (even when not connected to the
web) won't I?

 

[Michel Bintener]

Since you have a Yahoo account, you could set up this account to forward any
incoming messages automatically to your .Mac/MobileMe account (through the
preferences in the Yahoo webmail interface). This works quite well, and that
way, you'll be able to access your e-mail messages through the .Mac/MobileMe
interface or any IMAP-capable e-mail application. Note that this method
won't allow you to *send* e-mail messages via Yahoo; you can only *read*
them via MobileMe, and if you hit the reply button, the message will be sent
through your .Mac/MobileMe account. You could therefore leave your Yahoo
account configured in Entourage for those occasions where you need to send
messages via your Yahoo account.

So, if I have a Yahoo Mail account as my primary e-mail address, what do I
need to do between it and the .Mac/MobileMe account? And then will my
Entourage data just change dynamically as things change on the server? I'll
still see everything as normal in Entourage (even when not connected to the
web) won't I?

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[William Smith]

So, if I have a Yahoo Mail account as my primary e-mail address, what do I
need to do between it and the .Mac/MobileMe account? And then will my
Entourage data just change dynamically as things change on the server? I'll
still see everything as normal in Entourage (even when not connected to the
web) won't I?

Hi Michelle!

Currently, you can enable .Mac syncing in System Preferences and enable
Contacts and Calendars syncing. Yahoo, however, does not sync with .Mac,
Address nor iCal. You can use Entourage with Yahoo for mail.

More Yahoo information: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/accounts/yahoo.html>.

I strongly suspect that MobileMe and .Mac will have very different sync
mechanisms and maybe some additional functionality will come of this for
Yahoo. I don't know.

Steve Jobs demonstrated that Outlook for Windows will sync mail,
calendar and contacts with MobileMe just like Exchange, which means
Entourage may do so *directly* as well without having to use Apple's
Sync Services. (Again, no one knows yet.)

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Diane Ross]

Currently, you can enable .Mac syncing in System Preferences and enable
Contacts and Calendars syncing.

There seems to be problems syncing with .mac right now so be sure you have
backups in case of duplications. I keep hoping that a Leopard update will
fix these sync problems.

 

[Michelle]

I understand that Yahoo itself doesn't sync with .Mac, Address or iCal.

I already use Entourage to view my Yahoo mail, so I just need Entourage to
sync with the others.

 

[Michelle]

So if I switch from POP to IMAP, I no longer get a local copy of messages
sent and received? That's one of the reason's I like using Entourage as an
e-mail client.

Can you explain a little more about the advantages of IMAP or the
disadvantages compared to what I used to doing with Entourage/yahoo
account/POP?

 

[Diane Ross]

Can you explain a little more about the advantages of IMAP or the
disadvantages compared to what I used to doing with Entourage/yahoo
account/POP?

This page gives the basics between POP and IMAP:

POP & IMAP Accounts <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/glossary/pop_imap.html>
The page also links to:

O'Reilly Network -- Using IMAP on Mac OS X
<http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/21/imap.html>

 

[Michel Bintener]

So if I switch from POP to IMAP, I no longer get a local copy of messages
sent and received? That's one of the reason's I like using Entourage as an
e-mail client.

Can you explain a little more about the advantages of IMAP or the
disadvantages compared to what I used to doing with Entourage/yahoo
account/POP?

See the links Diane gave you for a more detailed understanding of POP
and IMAP. You can of course download your messages locally and archive
them on your computer to access them offline (and to create space on the
server if you ever manage to hit the 20GB limit), so there's no need to
worry about losing some of Entourage's functionality.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[Michelle]

Thanks--that does help clarify some of my confusion.

A couple of more questions, please.

It doesn't look like Yahoo even supports IMAP, so I'm assuming that I would
have to route everything through another account that DOES support
IMAP--Gmail or MobileMe.

It also sounds like I DO have the choice to both leave them on the server
AND download a local copy to keep on my computer. So if I do this, I'm
assuming that I just have to be careful where I do the reading/sending so
that it's always the server that can detect and control this. Would I set
up IMAP folders in Entourage on my main computer and then check everywhere
else via a web interface? When I'm at work/school, I'm just used to
checking my mail via the Yahoo site anyway.

Okay, so I understand the basic differences, but am still la little fuzzy in
the implementation.

 

[Michel Bintener]

It doesn't look like Yahoo even supports IMAP, so I'm assuming that I would
have to route everything through another account that DOES support
IMAP--Gmail or MobileMe.

Yes, that's what I told you in my first reply. All your Yahoo mail messages
need to be forwarded automatically to an IMAP account, preferably MobileMe
(if you want to view all your mail messages in one central location).

It also sounds like I DO have the choice to both leave them on the server
AND download a local copy to keep on my computer. So if I do this, I'm
assuming that I just have to be careful where I do the reading/sending so
that it's always the server that can detect and control this. Would I set
up IMAP folders in Entourage on my main computer and then check everywhere
else via a web interface? When I'm at work/school, I'm just used to
checking my mail via the Yahoo site anyway.

That's not exactly how IMAP works. If you create an IMAP account in
Entourage, the app will automatically download a copy of the messages on the
server to create local copies. The difference to POP accounts, however, is
the fact that most changes made to the local copy will be synched back to
the server. For example, let's assume you receive a new mail message via
IMAP, and Entourage downloads this new mail message. If you read it,
Entourage synchs this status change (from unread to read) back to the
server. If you access your account through a different interface (MobileMe
web interface, Apple Mail, ...), the message will now show up as read.
Similarly, if you move, copy, delete, forward, flag or reply to a message,
these changes will also be synched back to the server so that the changes
are visible from within all the possible interfaces you could use to access
your e-mail messages. You can even create new folders on the server through
one application and then automatically access them through another; your
e-mail clients basically display a local copy of the contents on the server.

Hope this made everything clearer.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[Scott T. Sanford]

Michelle,
It's really not that complicated:
If all your e-mail clients are setup for IMAP, Entourage and / or
Mail.app will download a copy of the message, but it technically stays
up on the server. If you want to check your mail from a web-based app
such as mobile.me or gmail or what have you, you're looking at the
server copy. When you send e-mail, assuming the server saves a sent
item, it will be visible to ALL methods of connecting since they're all
looking at the same IMAP folders.

HTH,
STSanford

 

[Scott Moore]

I'm finding that IMAP is the way to go lately, for the reasons you mention
below. I view my mail on several computers, and using IMAP generally works
well to keep on those devices in sync.

So if I open mail on my PC, read some, reply to others, then delete some,
then open Entourage on my MAC, I see all those changes. With POP you just
get a copy. With IMAP you keep your folders in sync. If I delete a file in
the inbox on my PC, the next time I open Entourage, it will have the same
view. It also remembers which mails have been read and replied to.

This is also working as a way to keep my email box neutral on the server, so
I can change email clients without having my email inbox tied to a program
like Entourage, or Outlook, as I've found terrible incompatibilities in MS
office, like the inability to import PST files on the MAC. This still
doesn't help with my contacts, but it's a start.

BTW, if Diane is reading: I did try your instructions on creating a csv file
to import. But it was pretty hard and I eventually abandoned it. Thanks for
the effort though, I do appreciate it.


-s

 

[Diane Ross]

BTW, if Diane is reading: I did try your instructions on creating a csv file
to import. But it was pretty hard and I eventually abandoned it. Thanks for
the effort though, I do appreciate it.

All the MVPs are lobbying hard to make the transfer between Macs and PCs
seamless. I do encourage everyone to continue to send feedback to Microsoft
to make it easier to transfer data. They are aware of the problem, but let's
give them the numbers they can't ignore.

Send feedback to Microsoft .

When working in Office, you can use the ³Send Feedback² option under the
Help menu in all of the Office applications or visit
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/suggestions.mspx>

 

[Michelle]

Thanks Michael. I think that your response helped clear up my confusion
somewhat. I do remember you telling me in your first reply about routing
e-mail through another account, but then other replies cleared up some
things while confusing me on others. So, my apologies for loosing that
advice in the jumble.

Thank you everyone for your advice and help. I guess the test will be when
I get to the point of actually setting everything up.

If I do change over to IMAP in Entourage and decide that for whatever reason
I don't like it, is it a royal pain to change back to POP?