Recurring events

E

Errol Sayre

I know I'm asking a question that has been answered before, but I can't find
an answer for it.

Our workgroup recently upgraded to Office 2004. We had left Entourage 2001
and v.X in favor of Apple Mail and iCal for contact and calendar sharing but
found we needed more advanced task tracking and other project management
features that Entourage 2004 offers. In Entourage 2004, however, we've run
into some hangups, most notably the inability to edit individual occurrences
of recurring events. I can't swear to it, but most of the other users
remember being able to edit more than just the time of recurring events in
pas versions. Now, we can't change the location, duration or even notes of
any individual event in a recurring series.

Has this been the case for a while? Back when I used 2001 I remember being
able to change anything about an individual event, just like iCal... Is this
a bug? Or just another "feature"?

Thanks for any help,

Errol Sayre
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

I know I'm asking a question that has been answered before, but I can't find
an answer for it.

Our workgroup recently upgraded to Office 2004. We had left Entourage 2001
and v.X in favor of Apple Mail and iCal for contact and calendar sharing but
found we needed more advanced task tracking and other project management
features that Entourage 2004 offers. In Entourage 2004, however, we've run
into some hangups, most notably the inability to edit individual occurrences
of recurring events. I can't swear to it, but most of the other users
remember being able to edit more than just the time of recurring events in
pas versions. Now, we can't change the location, duration or even notes of
any individual event in a recurring series.

Has this been the case for a while? Back when I used 2001 I remember being
able to change anything about an individual event, just like iCal... Is this
a bug? Or just another "feature"?
Click to expand...

I can't remember 2001, but I very much doubt it had more functionality than
X.

You can _definitely_ edit anything you want in a recurring event as long as
you want to edit it for _all occurrences_ ("Open this series"). The
limitation only comes when you want to edit "Just this one" - then all you
can edit is the start time, and the end time moves to match (same event
length). Definitely a poor limitation. iCal has a different method which
works better for this, yes, but it's so much poorer in other ways. I even
find it annoying that you _can't_ edit all occurrences unless you seek out
the very first occurrence in the calendar, instead only "future
occurrences", and iCal makes a new recurring event for the future
occurrences. (Not too serious, though.)

Your alternative is to DELETE "Just this one", and make a new non-recurring
event with altered fields. Of course that's time-consuming. My free script
"Duplicate Calendar Events X" might be able to help. I forget what it does
about recurring originals - I'll go check.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
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 Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
E

Errol Sayre

I actually have already tried your script and it didn't quite work as I had
hoped... Entirely too many dialogs for the users that will need this
functionality. Actually, I have considered modifying it to be much simpler,
only making an exact copy of the selected event and deleting the one of the
recurring events. If you're willing to make such a modification, that'd be
great...

I'm pretty sure 2001 did this, I'll have to go get my old copy back out of
the dust... I mean storage closet and see if I'm right. It may just be that
I've been using iCal since day 1 of its release and am having "false
memories" of Entourage.

Errol Sayre
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

For "duplicating", you need the dialogs - since it's not really duplicating
but also modifying. And regular AppleScript doesn't provide more complex
interfaces that could let you do a bunch of entries all at once. A scripting
addition that's made it to OS X since I wrote that script does, however.

But to do just this - create an "exception" non-recurring event - might be
simpler. AppleScript can't delete "Just this one" however - you'd have to do
that yourself still. There's a whole lot of things about events that are
still totally unscriptable - 'exception' occurrences of recurring events,
deleted and deleting occurrences, invitations, attendees, time zones - I
could go on and on - are all unscriptable.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
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 Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
E

Errol Sayre

I think the only appropriate response would be to begin "weaving a tapestry
of profanity..."
 
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