New to Entourage, have some questions

M

MacGrrl

Ok...here goes...
Seems like a cool little program. But I have a lot of tasks to manage,
lots of projects.

1. Can I sequence or change the order of tasks, other than assigning a
general priority?

2. It's maddening that it won't let you do multi-level task lists. Is
there anything I can do about this?

3. Does anyone have any tips for managing multiple projects and large
task lists in Entourage? I don't have the budget for a project manager
right now. Also I kind of like Entourage, it's pretty intuitive.

4. Does anyone know of any other support boards or resources I should
be aware of?

Thanks =)
 
B

Barry Wainwright

Ok...here goes...
Seems like a cool little program. But I have a lot of tasks to manage,
lots of projects.

1. Can I sequence or change the order of tasks, other than assigning a
general priority?
Click to expand...

Yes, - look at categories. All items can be sorted by primary category
2. It's maddening that it won't let you do multi-level task lists. Is
there anything I can do about this?
Click to expand...

Categories are your friend :)

All items can have more than one category assigned, so you can assign a
primary category depending on some major identifying feature, then use
secondary categories to identify sub-features. Selecting by category in
either the quick-filter, advanced find or custom view will give you a lot of
control over what is listed and selected.
3. Does anyone have any tips for managing multiple projects and large
task lists in Entourage? I don't have the budget for a project manager
right now. Also I kind of like Entourage, it's pretty intuitive.
Click to expand...

Explore the Projects feature of Entourage 2004 (really, Office 2004 - some
of the features cross application boundaries). Start with the online help
and the sixth icon in the main browser window - 'Project View'
4. Does anyone know of any other support boards or resources I should
be aware of?
Click to expand...

There is these newsgroups and the Entourage:mac mailing list:
mailto:[email protected]
 
M

MacGrrl

Barry said:
Yes, - look at categories. All items can be sorted by primary
Click to expand...
category

Thanks Barry, yes I am becoming familiar with the categories. I will
check out the advanced sort though.
But if you have ten items in the same category, or twenty items from
different categories, is there a way to adjust the order of those
tasks? Because often I want to do things in a certain order, not by
category.
Thanks =)
 
B

Barry Wainwright

category

Thanks Barry, yes I am becoming familiar with the categories. I will
check out the advanced sort though.
But if you have ten items in the same category, or twenty items from
different categories, is there a way to adjust the order of those
tasks? Because often I want to do things in a certain order, not by
category.
Thanks =)
Click to expand...

Not directly, but you can assign sub-categories such as "Priority 1",
"Priority 2" etc. Clunky, I know.

Tasks also have a 'priority' setting with 5 different levels - a listing
showing the priority column can be sorted by priority. Will this help?
 
M

MacGrrl

Well that was what I was afraid of. too bad. In some ways entourage
is really a cool program, but they seem to have left out some very
basic elements of a scheduling program. Like drag and drop calendaring
without having to go in and set the time ( i could be wrong about this,
i've only tried that once so may be it does do that). Also multiple
level task lists, and this task order issue. I'm blown away that
someone at Microsoft didn't think of being able to arrange task order.
what's up with that? Even in Word tables you can arrange the order of
rows.

maybe some of you mac developers out there could write a plugin that
would make this possible. Until then the program is not much use to me.
I'm not using it for a mail center, rather as an aid to organizing my
desktop projects. It has all the other elements but it's going to be
too much trouble to arrange the tasks steps order in my head with this
many projects.

Too bad, I really like a lot of hte other features of entourage,
especially the look, feel, concept and the way it keeps everything in
one place. It does seem like in terms of function some things have not
been well thought out though.
 
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