Keyboard shortcut bugs in Entourage 2004

S

scott2si

We depend heavily on using keyboard shortcuts to navigate text in
Entourage 2004, but a few problems in Entourage 2004 have made this an
incredibly frustrating experience for us:

Here's just a few of the keyboard navigation problems:

1. Start typing up an email message and put the word "I" somewhere in
the middle of your message. Put your cursor blinking immediately after
the word "I". Then press "option-left arrow" on your keyboard -- this
is supposed to take you to the beginning of the word, but instead, it
actually jumps you back TWO WORDS instead. This same bug happens when
you try "shift-option-left arrow" as well. This is really throwing us
off, who depend on these keyboard shortcuts on a regular basis. This
particular bug seems to only happen when you've got a one-character
word like "I".

2. Of even more frustration -- and this one is hard to quantify -- is
the fact that moving through text using the arrow keys is now a very
jumpy, haphazard experience. This used to be a very smooth process
with predictable results, because you could see the rate at which your
cursor was moving through the text. Now, however, this has become an
absolute nightmare: the cursor will stutter along, sometimes flowing
smoothly for a few words and then quickly skipping over a few words and
then pausing for a split second at another word. This happens even
with all of the "autocorrect" features & "spell-check" features turned
off. This is on a Power Mac G4 Dual 800 with Mac OS X 10.3.7, and it's
even worse on an iBook G3.

3. When the preview pane is on the bottom, and the focus is on the
preview pane, hitting SHIFT-TAB used to take us immediately back to the
list of messages. But now, hitting SHIFT-TAB takes us up to the
"search" field instead, so we have to hit shift-tab TWICE in order to
get back to our list of messages. This is not nearly as frustrating as
#1 and #2 above, but is still causing more work on our end than we
would like.

With all the attention Microsoft paid to unneeded features like the
Project Center, it's extremely frustrating & annoying that the simple
act of typing up text in an email message has fallen to the backburner
and has made this a very bad experience for us.
 
M

matt neuburg

We depend heavily on using keyboard shortcuts to navigate text in
Entourage 2004, but a few problems in Entourage 2004 have made this an
incredibly frustrating experience for us:

Here's just a few of the keyboard navigation problems:

1. Start typing up an email message and put the word "I" somewhere in
the middle of your message. Put your cursor blinking immediately after
the word "I". Then press "option-left arrow" on your keyboard -- this
is supposed to take you to the beginning of the word, but instead, it
actually jumps you back TWO WORDS instead. This same bug happens when
you try "shift-option-left arrow" as well. This is really throwing us
off, who depend on these keyboard shortcuts on a regular basis. This
particular bug seems to only happen when you've got a one-character
word like "I".

2. Of even more frustration -- and this one is hard to quantify -- is
the fact that moving through text using the arrow keys is now a very
jumpy, haphazard experience. This used to be a very smooth process
with predictable results, because you could see the rate at which your
cursor was moving through the text. Now, however, this has become an
absolute nightmare: the cursor will stutter along, sometimes flowing
smoothly for a few words and then quickly skipping over a few words and
then pausing for a split second at another word. This happens even
with all of the "autocorrect" features & "spell-check" features turned
off. This is on a Power Mac G4 Dual 800 with Mac OS X 10.3.7, and it's
even worse on an iBook G3.

3. When the preview pane is on the bottom, and the focus is on the
preview pane, hitting SHIFT-TAB used to take us immediately back to the
list of messages. But now, hitting SHIFT-TAB takes us up to the
"search" field instead, so we have to hit shift-tab TWICE in order to
get back to our list of messages. This is not nearly as frustrating as
#1 and #2 above, but is still causing more work on our end than we
would like.

With all the attention Microsoft paid to unneeded features like the
Project Center, it's extremely frustrating & annoying that the simple
act of typing up text in an email message has fallen to the backburner
and has made this a very bad experience for us.
Click to expand...

Not to mention how incredibly slow Entourage's reaction to your typing
is. I can easily outpace Entourage just by hitting an arrow key a few
times. m.
 
S

scott2si

Agreed completely. I am so frustrated with this, that I am THIS CLOSE
to switching over to Apple's Mail, even though I know that I will be
losing dozens of features by switching over to Mail. I feel like I'm
typing on a lethargic old Mac SE when using Entourage 2004 -- it's
absolutely awful. Isn't there any way we can get Microsoft to actually
LISTEN to us about these very BASIC problems? Man, Microsoft is one
bad company. And their Mac division is no better than the rest of
their company -- they're just as close-minded and closed off to
listening to customers as the rest of their company. I want to type
QUICKLY in my email program -- is that too much to ask, Microsoft?!
 
S

scott2si

You know, I've been experiementing around with Entourage's "slow
typing" speeds, and it turns out that Entourage 2004 really slows down
when there's a lot of network activity going on in the background. Why
in the world would Entourage slow down, just because there's a bunch of
websites loading in the background? Programs like BBEdit & Mailsmith &
TextEdit & even Microsoft Word do NOT slow down when there's a lot of
network activity... and this was also not a problem in previous
versions of Entourage. This is a realy problem that Microsoft needs to
look into.
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

I was wondering, b/c I type fairly fast and have never outpaced Ent 2004,
though I have Word occasionally. Interesting.

You don't have any schedules set so that Entourage is constantly (every
minute or so) connecting to the network, do you?

It might be worth testing whether temporarily checking Work Offline makes a
difference?
 
S

scott2si

No automatic schedules set for me -- and it doesn't speed up when "Work
Offline" is set. I'm on a Power Mac G4 Dual 800 running Mac OS X
10.3.8. I refuse to buy a G5 tower just for email! ;)

I did notice that it just *SLIGHTLY* speeds up when I turn off "check
spelling as you type", but it's still very sluggish. (Yet Apple's Mail
application also checks spelling as you type, and it is LIGHTNING
FAST.)

It does seem, however, that after a restart of the computer, Entourage
2004 is pretty fast for a ilttle while -- but once several other
programs are launched in the background, it slows down. i've even seen
this WITHOUT network activity going on in the background.

So I think it must have something to do with how Entourage 2004 is
managing its memory or its resources or something like that -- that's
my best non-technical guess.
 
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