Invitations from Outlook on a PC

J

Jeremy E Cath

Hi folks,

Currently using Office vX but planning an upgrade at the end of the current
business trip, but... One question to really make it worthwhile (everything
else is just icing on the cake)....

Does it handle meeting invitations from outlook 2000 / XP / 2003 yet ? At
the moment all I get is the text and a winmail.dat attachment, and no
ability to add it to my calendar (and accept/decline to update their
details)

Also, does it handle winmail.dat / tnef attachements etc properly ?

Thanks !
 
A

Anand

Hi Jeremy,

The winmail.dat attachments are indipendant of the version of Entourage you
use. The winmail.dat attachments are received when a user using PC sends a
mail using the Rich Text format.

Work around:
Request the sender to use Plain text or HTML to compose the message.

Anand
 
J

Jeremy E Cath

Sadly getting other users to change the way they work is probably less
likely than getting Entourage fixed.
I could understand it if the products where totally different, or on
platforms that hardly ever had to communicate... But it's the real world !

Actually, in the case of the invitations I receive, the user already
composes in HTML, it's the Outlook calendar invitation attachment that gets
encoded so I can't read/respond to it !
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

That doesn't sound right. If you are running Entourage on Exchange, I
believe you should get the invitations OK form people on the same Exchange
server.

Otherwise, if you're like me and not on Exchange, you should be getting the
invitations from Outlook as .ics attachments. The first time, drag one to
your desktop, and change its icon (association) from iCal to Entourage by
doing a Get Info (cmd-I), changing Opens With to Microsoft Entourage, then
click Change All. Then double-click it to open as an invitation (already
entered in the Calendar) in Entourage. In future, you should see the .ics
attachments with Entourage icons and can just double-click them in place in
the Attachments pane of the email - no need to drag to disk.

The fact that you are seeing winmail.dat attachments instead of .ics
attachments would indicate to me that the sender must be attaching something
else as well. Otherwise that should not be happening. Check with your ender.
Just to try, also them him/her to send as plain text. There may be some
setting that sends all messages - including invitations - to you in RTF.
They can change a setting in your contact to always send to you as plain
text. (In Outlook 2003, messages are sent by default in HTML, so this
shouldn't be a problem there, but you never know.)

--
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.
 
J

Jeremy E Cath

It does seem very weird.... And it's now fixed !
I'm using Entourage Vx and the contact sending the invitations is using
Outlook 2000sp3. Neither of us use Exchange
Their setting is to use HTML for mails, and the Outlook calendar set to use
iCalendar by default. They have no default/override on the email address
they're sending to me.
Somewhere along the line it looks like it got corrupt on the OL2K side... We
did a detect and repair, and although it hadn't helped before... This time
it did (they so have to upgrade to a Mac or OL2K3 !)
Funnily enough, they don't get the invitiation I just sent from my Entourage
as an iCal / ics attachment... Just a plain text mail - ho hum !
 
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