Office 2004 Entourage- What a disappointment

[Mike Tuller]

I was really looking forward to Office 2004's Entourage. Unfortunately I
find it disappointing. No out of office assistant, no way to view other's
folders, I can't even view the public folders that are on the server. Why? I
can inside of Mail.app, but not in Entourage. We store a lot of
informational files in the public folders, so this makes it pointless for us
to upgrade from Outlook 2001. Still!!!!

I couldn't even import my data from Office X 10.1.5. I had to create my
accounts and set preferences all over again.

Oh, and if I could turn off the Today, Yesterday, etc listing for the
emails, I would be happier. I find that annoying.

Not all is bad though. There is better exchange support. We don't have to
connect via IMAP anymore.


Mike

 

[Barry Wainwright]

I was really looking forward to Office 2004's Entourage. Unfortunately I
find it disappointing. No out of office assistant, no way to view other's
folders, I can't even view the public folders that are on the server. Why? I
can inside of Mail.app, but not in Entourage. We store a lot of
informational files in the public folders, so this makes it pointless for us
to upgrade from Outlook 2001. Still!!!!

You should be able to do this through OWA & a web bropwser.

I couldn't even import my data from Office X 10.1.5. I had to create my
accounts and set preferences all over again.

Try rebuilding in Office vX first - there is likely some corruption in the
database that is foiling the import.

Oh, and if I could turn off the Today, Yesterday, etc listing for the
emails, I would be happier. I find that annoying.

Preferences; 'General' pane; uncheck 'Use relative dates'

Not all is bad though. There is better exchange support. We don't have to
connect via IMAP anymore.

Glad you're happy with some things ;-)

 

[Mike Tuller]

You should be able to do this through OWA & a web bropwser.

I could use a Windows machine or Outlook 2001 too. That is the problem. This
should have been included in Entourage.

Try rebuilding in Office vX first - there is likely some corruption in the
database that is foiling the import.

That is possible. I have entered everything manually already though, so I
will just stick with what I have.

Preferences; 'General' pane; uncheck 'Use relative dates'

That only removes it from the columns. Not from the overall listing in the
main window. The banners is what I am talking about.

Glad you're happy with some things ;-)

I am, and I am find more things I like in Entourage 2004 as an email client.
As an Exchange client it is weak though. I would understand if this was an
Apple product, but this is Microsoft, and if Microsoft can't write a good
Exchange client, something is wrong. My 2 cents anyway.

I have been looking forward to seeing all of the new things in Entourage
2004, and the most important was Exchange support. Word, Excel, PowerPoint
are applications that the users here didn't know how to use in the last
version, so an upgrade means (almost) nothing to them. Moving away from
Outlook on OS 9 does, and without the functionality that Outlook gave
implemented into Entourage, it will be hard to get them excited about the
switch.


Mike

 

[Barry Wainwright]

That only removes it from the columns. Not from the overall listing in the
main window. The banners is what I am talking about.

OK, I didn't realise that. Thanks for clarifying.

There doesn't seem to be any way of changing those banners. I'll report it
on up.

 

[Chris Langlois]

This is ridiculous - the Exchange support should come from Microsoft.
Period!

Slam them here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp

Having no real way of viewing public folders, no Out of Office
Assistant, no way of viewing others Calendars, etc etc etc, makes this
product useless in a corporate environment.

Come on Microsoft - we are tired of bending over and getting reamed by
your lack of support for the Mac community.

 

[Chris Langlois]

There doesn't seem to be any way of changing those banners. I'll report it

on up.

Uncheck View--Arrange By--Show in Groups

And I agree that is WAY TOO annoying. I have some emails that are
from a year ago in my Inbox because they remind of important points in
a couple-year project. I have today, yesterday, last week, 2 weeks
ago, 3 weeks ago, last month, this year, and older. Good God, what
knucklehead designed that? Typical of MS....bad design.

 

[Dave Cortright]

I have some emails that are

from a year ago in my Inbox because they remind of important points in
a couple-year project. I have today, yesterday, last week, 2 weeks
ago, 3 weeks ago, last month, this year, and older. Good God, what
knucklehead designed that? Typical of MS....bad design.

Really? Then what in your mind would be a good design for grouping by date?
Or do you just think grouping by date is not useful?

 

[Paul Robichaux [MVP]]

This is ridiculous - the Exchange support should come from Microsoft.
Period!

Slam them here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp

Having no real way of viewing public folders, no Out of Office
Assistant, no way of viewing others Calendars, etc etc etc, makes this
product useless in a corporate environment.

1. You can easily view public folders that contain post/message items.
2. It's trivial to use OWA to turn on out-of-office messages.
3. You can view other peoples' calendars via delegate access.

Calling this product "useless" is too harsh.

Come on Microsoft - we are tired of bending over and getting reamed by
your lack of support for the Mac community.

As has been explained about 10^5 times here so far: the Macintosh
business unit at Microsoft is tiny relative to the Outlook team alone
(much less the entire Windows Office team). They have to carefully
balance what they want to do. There are relatively few people using Macs
with Exchange servers (based on both Microsoft's customer numbers and my
own anecdotal experience with hundreds of Exchange installations); there
are many, many, many more Mac users who *aren't* talking to Exchange
servers, and frankly they don't give a hoot about things like public
folder support or category synchronization.

The MacBU team has to counterbalance every feature among several
factors: how many users need/want it, how long it will take to develop,
whether there are any technical showstoppers (like Apple OS bugs) that
prevent it from working, and so on. Some Exchange support features met
the bar for this release. Others didn't.

However, since *all* of the MacBU folks are on Exchange servers at
Microsoft, and since *all* of them have to use Windows machines to do
the few things that Entourage 2004 doesn't currently do, rest assured
that they feel our pain.

--
Paul Robichaux <[email protected]>
MVP - Exchange
Exchange security book: http://www.e2ksecurity.com
FAQs: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exchange.htm &
http://www.swinc.com/resource/e2kfaq.htm

 

[oldlibmike]

1. You can easily view public folders that contain post/message items.
2. It's trivial to use OWA to turn on out-of-office messages.
3. You can view other peoples' calendars via delegate access.

Calling this product "useless" is too harsh.


As has been explained about 10^5 times here so far: the Macintosh
business unit at Microsoft is tiny relative to the Outlook team alone
(much less the entire Windows Office team). They have to carefully
balance what they want to do. There are relatively few people using Macs
with Exchange servers (based on both Microsoft's customer numbers and my
own anecdotal experience with hundreds of Exchange installations); there
are many, many, many more Mac users who *aren't* talking to Exchange
servers, and frankly they don't give a hoot about things like public
folder support or category synchronization.

The MacBU team has to counterbalance every feature among several
factors: how many users need/want it, how long it will take to develop,
whether there are any technical showstoppers (like Apple OS bugs) that
prevent it from working, and so on. Some Exchange support features met
the bar for this release. Others didn't.

However, since *all* of the MacBU folks are on Exchange servers at
Microsoft, and since *all* of them have to use Windows machines to do
the few things that Entourage 2004 doesn't currently do, rest assured
that they feel our pain.

A very valid point! I don't think many use Entourage with Exchange.
IMAP on the other hand is more likely to be used heavily especially in
mixed OSX/Linux configurations. Secure IMAP with Linux is seriously
broken - linux server certificates aren't recognized and permissions
of 1777 are requested by Entourage for /var/spool/mail - not a good
thing.

Its not entirely shocking that Microsoft is having difficulties with
security - never something they have had a aptitude for, but I do hope
Entourage can work at least as well as Entourage.X did. So far I'm
disappointed in the upgrade.

I anxiously await a patch.

 

[Mike Tuller]

1. You can easily view public folders that contain post/message items.
2. It's trivial to use OWA to turn on out-of-office messages.
3. You can view other peoples' calendars via delegate access.

Calling this product "useless" is too harsh.

It may be harsh, but when you are 80% Macintosh, as we are here, and you use
Exchange as your email server, it can be "almost useless". The point of
having Exchange was so that we could communicate better, and this worked
with Outlook 2001. Now with Entourage 2004, I feel we have less features
than we did 3 years ago. That is as far as Exchange support goes.

As has been explained about 10^5 times here so far: the Macintosh
business unit at Microsoft is tiny relative to the Outlook team alone
(much less the entire Windows Office team). They have to carefully
balance what they want to do. There are relatively few people using Macs
with Exchange servers (based on both Microsoft's customer numbers and my
own anecdotal experience with hundreds of Exchange installations); there
are many, many, many more Mac users who *aren't* talking to Exchange
servers, and frankly they don't give a hoot about things like public
folder support or category synchronization.

The MacBU team has to counterbalance every feature among several
factors: how many users need/want it, how long it will take to develop,
whether there are any technical showstoppers (like Apple OS bugs) that
prevent it from working, and so on. Some Exchange support features met
the bar for this release. Others didn't.

However, since *all* of the MacBU folks are on Exchange servers at
Microsoft, and since *all* of them have to use Windows machines to do
the few things that Entourage 2004 doesn't currently do, rest assured
that they feel our pain.

Yes, but Microsoft asked a couple of years ago if we wanted to have Outlook
updated or have Entourage replace Outlook for Exchange support.
Overwhelmingly we decided to have Entourage support Exchange. I'm not
frustrated with the work that the Mac Business Unit is doing, but come on.
They put all the work into the Project Manager, maybe they should have put
that time and effort into making Entourage a full Exchange client, like they
said they would.

We have thousands of Macs to move over to OS X, and we were hoping that
Entourage 2004 would allow us to be fully OS X as far as applications go.
Without all of the Exchange support, we may have to hold off and just
continue to use Outlook in classic mode.

 

[Dave Cortright]

It may be harsh, but when you are 80% Macintosh, as we are here, and you use
Exchange as your email server, it can be "almost useless".

Which begs the question, why would an org with 80% Macs purchase a Windows
Exchange server as the backend without fully investigating the abilities and
limitations of such a combo? No need to answer, just a rhetorical question.

Yes, but Microsoft asked a couple of years ago if we wanted to have Outlook
updated or have Entourage replace Outlook for Exchange support.
Overwhelmingly we decided to have Entourage support Exchange. I'm not
frustrated with the work that the Mac Business Unit is doing, but come on.
They put all the work into the Project Manager,

No they didn't. There are a bunch more features throughout Entourage,
including Exchange work to use DAV for mail, support for delegate accounts,
and ability to auto-configure Exchange accounts (plus a bunch of bug fixes).
The first one is a huge feature for me. It allows me to seamlessly connect
to my Exchange account from *anywhere* on the net w/o having to VPN in
first.

maybe they should have put that time and effort into making Entourage a full
Exchange client, like they said they would.

I don't believe Microsoft has ever said Entourage will ever be a "full
Exchange client" (whatever that means). I'd love a reference to this claim.

 

[Eddie Hargreaves]

I don't believe Microsoft has ever said Entourage will ever be a "full
Exchange client" (whatever that means). I'd love a reference to this claim.

Microsoft said that while Outlook 2001 for Mac would remain the Exchange
solution for users of Mac OS 9, Entourage would become the Exchange solution
for Mac OS X. Considering how much more Exchange functionality Outlook 2001
has over Entourage 2004, I don't think they've lived up to that promise.

"The single most popular request we've heard since launching Office v. X is
that our customers need an Exchange solution for Mac OS X, and we're
ecstatic to begin satisfying that need through the most popular PIM on the
Mac platform," said Tim McDonough, director of marketing and business
development for the MacBU at Microsoft. "We recognize that many of our
customers use Exchange for their server-side communications and need a
solution that's made specifically for Mac OS X. By building the Exchange
solution into Entourage X, we're giving users of Mac core Exchange
functionality and cross-platform compatibility in an e-mail client designed
to meet their needs."

<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/Feb03/02-11ExchangeSolutionPR
..asp>

 

[Dave Cortright]

Microsoft said that while Outlook 2001 for Mac would remain the Exchange
solution for users of Mac OS 9, Entourage would become the Exchange solution
for Mac OS X. Considering how much more Exchange functionality Outlook 2001
has over Entourage 2004, I don't think they've lived up to that promise.

"The single most popular request we've heard since launching Office v. X is
that our customers need an Exchange solution for Mac OS X, and we're
ecstatic to begin satisfying that need through the most popular PIM on the
Mac platform," said Tim McDonough, director of marketing and business
development for the MacBU at Microsoft. "We recognize that many of our
customers use Exchange for their server-side communications and need a
solution that's made specifically for Mac OS X. By building the Exchange
solution into Entourage X, we're giving users of Mac core Exchange
functionality and cross-platform compatibility in an e-mail client designed
to meet their needs."

<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/Feb03/02-11ExchangeSolutionPR
.asp>

I'll say it again Eddie: "full Exchange client" != "an Exchange solution"

 

[rocco]

OK, I didn't realise that. Thanks for clarifying.

There doesn't seem to be any way of changing those banners. I'll report it
on up.

Uh, Click 'View' - 'Arrange By' - 'Show in Groups' when it is checked
and it will then uncheck it and no more 'banners'.

Rocco