Entourage Rule shortfalls...

D

Destroyer

Recently I was asked by a friend to help his wife out with some
confusion she was having with her Entourage on the Mac. It turns out
that the mail server she uses had recently been switched to allow for
access through IMAP only. (Previous to this she connected to the
server using POP3.)

As she had been using the old setup for quite some time (although I'd
upgraded her through the various versions of Office X) she found the
new look of her access to her mail folders via IMAP quite confusing.

I decided that I'd make her IMAP environment look as much like the POP3
folder structure as possible by setting up rules to move her incoming
mail to her local inbox and her sent mail to her local sent folder.
Simple, right? Nope!

It turns out that there is no trigger for actions to be performed when
mail is retrieved or when mail is sent like there is in the PC
implementation of Office 2003. On top of that if I tried to setup a
option/preference to have her sent mail deposited to a local Sent Mail
folder the software ONLY allows you to use an IMAP folder on the
server!

I don't have a Mac in front of me right now or I'd probably also run
through a bunch of user interface inconsistencies I ran across as well
during this process.

I'm betting that MS will not address these shortcomings in the current
version of Office and probably just opt to implement them in the new
Office 2004 but I was really disappointed with the discrepancy in
capability between the PC and Macintosh implementations of their mail
client.

If anyone has a work around for this I'd been keen to hear it. (I did
update her software to the latest revision of Office X prior to trying
to do this.)

Cheers!
 
M

Michel Bintener

[snip]

I decided that I'd make her IMAP environment look as much like the POP3
folder structure as possible by setting up rules to move her incoming
mail to her local inbox and her sent mail to her local sent folder.
Simple, right? Nope!
Click to expand...

Actually, it is. Unless I've misunderstood your intention. See below for
instructions.
It turns out that there is no trigger for actions to be performed when
mail is retrieved or when mail is sent like there is in the PC
implementation of Office 2003. On top of that if I tried to setup a
option/preference to have her sent mail deposited to a local Sent Mail
folder the software ONLY allows you to use an IMAP folder on the
server!
Click to expand...

Having never used Outlook, I don't know what "actions" are, but here's how I
would do it in Entourage. First of all, create a new rule through
Tools>Rules, in the IMAP section. In the Condition section, select "If
account is [her user account]", and in the Action section, select "Move
message to" and select the local inbox.

As for the sent messages, again, use a rule. Select the Outgoing tab in the
Rules window and create a new rule. It's basically the same rule as the one
above, except that you'll have to select the local Sent Items box as the
destination folder.
I don't have a Mac in front of me right now or I'd probably also run
through a bunch of user interface inconsistencies I ran across as well
during this process.
Click to expand...

That is because the program you're using is called Entourage, and not
Outlook. Entourage is not, as some people erroneously put it, "Outlook for
the Mac", it is an entirely different application. True, there are many
similarities, but generally speaking, Outlook and Entourage have a different
code and are therefore different applications, in spite of the fact that
they aspire to fulfil the same functions.
I'm betting that MS will not address these shortcomings in the current
version of Office and probably just opt to implement them in the new
Office 2004 but I was really disappointed with the discrepancy in
capability between the PC and Macintosh implementations of their mail
client.
Click to expand...

What shortcomings? The workaround I posted above should work (fingers
crossed. True, I'm using Office 2004, and true, I don't have my IMAP account
configured that way, but as I said, the way Entourage behaves in this case
should be quite the same.) As for "the discrepancy in capability between
between the PC and Macintosh implementations of Microsoft's mail client",
see my above comment. Outlook is an older product than Entourage, it
therefore has had more time to mature. Entourage in itself is already quite
a mature application (2004 is certainly more mature than v.X), but as I've
said, it is not Outlook, it's a different application altogether.

A final comment: why go through all the hassle of configuring an IMAP
account to behave like a POP account? Could you not convince your friend to
get used to the IMAP interface? It's not as if it was that different to a
local account: you could collapse the local folders in the folder list so
that only the IMAP folder structure is displayed. That would be considerably
easier than using rules to move messages all the time; because, no matter
what, you will not get rid of the IMAP folder structure, it will be
displayed even if your messages are moved to the local inbox.

But anyway, if none of the above worked for you, just post back.

Michel
 
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